Mumbai: Work on to restore suburban train services hit by Puducherry Express derailment

Commuters walking on railway tracks between Matunga and Dadar. Pic/Atul Kamble

The suburban train services on the fast corridor in Mumbai, which were affected after the Puducherry Express derailed near Matunga station in the city, will be fully restored by Saturday noon, a Central Railway spokesperson said.

Three coaches of the Dadar-Puducherry Express (Train no 11005) derailed near Matunga station on Friday night after the engine of the CSMT-Gadag Express, going in the same direction, dashed it sideways. Following the incident, several long-distance express trains were cancelled or short-terminated, and the local train traffic was also affected.

Talking to reporters, Shivaji Sutar, chief spokesperson of Central Railway, said that the up fast line (CSMT-bound) was already restored by 8.30 am on Saturday, while the traffic on the slow line, which was suspended for a brief period due to safety reason, was restored some time after the accident. The zonal railway through its Twitter handle also said that it first restored the traffic on the up fast line (towards Dadar) on Saturday at 8.30 am and Latur-Mumbai Express was the first train to use the restored up fast line.

Sutar said that two of the three coaches of the derailed Puducherry Express have been re-railed and removed from the tracks and efforts are on to re-rail the third one. After the incident, the traffic on the up and down slow line, which was suspended for some time for safety reasons, had been restored last night.

Though the trains on the mainline are running, the trains on the slow corridor are affected. Suburban train commuters faced inconvenience as the train movement on the mainline of the Central Railway got disrupted. "Please tell the people that slow up track is dead totally, My local is at stuck between Ghatkopar and Vidyavihar since last 1 hour," passenger Rohit Harip tweeted. Mumbai's suburban train network is one of the busiest in the world. About 3,000 local trains, including over 1,700 on the Central Railway, are operated on a daily basis, in addition to the outstation trains and goods trains. Before the pandemic, daily over 75 lakh commuters used to travel on the suburban trains.

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