It wasn’t a very pleasant start to the new year for the Central Railway, as an overhead cable fault disrupted services on the Harbour Line for over an hour early on Sunday morning
Around 8.20 am, a local heading to Vashi was entering platform 4 of Sanpada station when the pantograph got stuck. Representation pic
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It wasn’t a very pleasant start to the new year for the Central Railway, as an overhead cable fault disrupted services on the Harbour Line for over an hour early on Sunday morning. This happened even before the mega block started, thus adding to passengers’ woes on the very first day of the year.
Around 8.20 am, a local train travelling towards Vashi was entering platform 4 of Sanpada station when the pantograph got stuck in the overhead line. This led to disruption of services between Mumbai and Navi Mumbai for more than an hour. Nearly 10 lakh commuters, who use the Harbour Line everyday, faced a harrowing time on the first Sunday of the year.
Speaking to mid-day, Central Railway spokesperson AK Singh said, “The Vashi-Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) local train got stuck due to the pantograph failure. But the problem was rectified by 9:05am.”
What added to the passengers’ woes was the mega block on Harbour Line scheduled to start from 11.10am and continue till 4.40pm on both the upward and downward lines on the CST-Chunabhatti stretch.
According to railway officials, the mega block on the CST-Chunabhatti down line started at 11.40am and continued till 4.40pm while on the Chunabhatti-CST Up line it started at 11.10am and continued till 4.10pm. As a result, train services between Vashi and Panvel were suspended for over five hours, adding to the trouble of passengers. This also led to a lot of rush at different stations.
Officials, however, claimed that special services were operated between Panvel and Kurla during the block period.