Commuters face harrowing crowds as technical snags, derailments delay trains on the metro and suburban local railway, both CR and WR
The coach of an empty local train derailed at a crossing point while it was entering the car shed around 11.30 am at Mumbai Central station on Wednesday, leading to disruptions. Pic/Shadab Khan
On a day of disruptions on Wednesday, the Mumbai Metro Blue Line One services went for a toss for the second consecutive day, the Western Railway (WR) saw the derailment of a coach of an empty local train near Mumbai Central, and Panvel-bound trains on the Harbour line of Central Railway (CR) continued to witness technical works, all of which led to delays.
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The Metro One team updated on Wednesday morning that services were slightly delayed due to a technical fault at 9:58 am and were restored by 10:12 am. Commuters complained that trains ran late for quite some time even after that. On Tuesday too, a technical snag put services on Line One out of gear, leading to extreme crowding and delays.
“It was pretty bad in the morning and even after the restoration, it took some time for things to get back to normal,” commuter Prakash Yadav said. The 11.40-km connector between Ghatkopar and Versova ferries millions of passengers daily.
In fact, on Wednesday, the line announced that on September 27, it achieved a record single-day ridership of 4,79,333 passengers, surpassing pre-COVID-19 numbers. Meanwhile, the WR said in a statement that one local train coach derailed. The derailment occurred on a crossover of the Virar-bound slow line on the way to the Mumbai Central car shed.
“There was a derailment of one trolley of empty EMU rake in Mumbai Central car shed yard at 11:20 am. The restoration was completed by afternoon. There was no disturbance as such and only delay was on the Virar-bound slow line,” WR chief public relations officer Sumit Thakur said. Commuters complained that trains were running late by 40 minutes and there were announcements at stations stating so.
“There were no trains on any platform at Dadar towards Borivli since 12:15 pm. They were just announcing a technical snag, leading to a lot of crowding at the station,” a commuter said. Another commuter said that WR trains slowed down and had lined up before Grant Road and commuters had taken to tracks.
“On the Harbour Line, there was a delay of one hour for CSMT-bound trains as per station indicators at Vashi. Panvel-bound trains were delayed by 30 minutes and on the Trans-Harbour Line, they were 15 minutes late. The Harbour Line is usually punctual and it is painful to see this,” commuter Shubham Padave said.
40
Delay in minutes on WR as per commuters
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