Heavy rain on Wednesday caused mudslides, landslides on tracks in ghats; water levels in rivers rose, bringing long-distance trains to a halt and stranding passengers
Tracks at Badlapur were submerged in water
Heavy rain created havoc on railway lines on Thursday as tracks were uprooted on the Mumbai-Pune, Mumbai-Nashik and Mumbai Konkan lines. On the Central Railway (CR), rail lines were damaged beyond immediate repair, uprooted by falling boulders and buried by mudslides. Services on the suburban section were completely restored by Thursday evening, while work on the rest was going on.
“Since rail lines in the hills are aligned away from roads, there were big challenges like no road approach in the ghat section, continuous heavy rain, and damage at various locations—making the machine operation more complex,” said CR Chief Public Relations Officer Shivaji Sutar. A large number of passengers were stranded in trains for over 15 hours though many of them shifted to buses arranged at the last minute.
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The track on the Mumbai-Pune ghat section was covered in mud
“Absolute mockery of passengers in CSTM-Nagpur Duronto Express. Train stranded outside Kasara station since yesterday 9.30 pm. No decision on further journey yet even as 15 hours pass by,” said a frustrated commuter Bhalchandra Bedarkar. Another commuter said that the suburban services were also affected.
However, the volume of damage was so immense that it was fortunate that no commuters were stranded in the water like last year. “We had called the NDRF, but they were stationed at Kasara and not required,” a CR spokesperson said. CR gave hourly updates about trains on Twitter. On Konkan Railway, heavy rain caused the water level under the Vashishti river bridge between Chiplun and Kamthe stations to rise above the danger level and a number of trains were cancelled, diverted and rescheduled.
Rain-caused damages at Khopoli
What exactly happened?
On Wednesday night, Kasara received 136 mm rainfall in just four hours and Karjat received 86.8 mm in one hour (1 am to 2 am). Later, rain in Karjat increased to 157.7 mm and in Lonavala, it was 178 mm. Sections in Badlapur, Vangani, Karjat, Khopoli, Chouk were badly damaged. A track was washed out near Vangani, Umbermali and between Khadavli and Vasind.
In both the 28-km southeast Karjat-Lonavala and the 14-km northeast Kasara-Igatpuri ghat sections, there was considerable damage.
In the southeast ghat sections, at least 15-20 locations needed attention as there were fallen boulders, trees, mud on the tracks, signal post damage, and overhead wire damage. The situation was similar in five to seven locations on the northeast section.
Stranded passengers were given food and ferried to waiting buses
On Thursday morning, work on the Umbermali track washout had almost been completed but trains could not run as the adjoining Kalu river had crossed the danger mark.
This made running trains beyond Titwala unsafe, an official said. Similarly, there was water on the tracks between Vangani and Badlapur.
Buses for passengers
All trains stranded mid-way were first taken to stations and detained for safety. “The railways called for 100 state transport buses and shipped passengers by bus from Umbermali/Kasara to Kalyan and Badlapur.
While 29 buses that ferried 1,290 train passengers were arranged between Kasara and Kalyan, 44 buses were arranged to ferry 2,860 passengers between Igatpuri and Kalyan. Food and other arrangements were also made for passengers.
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