Minor rail fracture found on CR line
A minor crack on the railway track was discovered between Sandhurst Road and Byculla around 8.30 am on Tuesday, and could have proved dangerous had it widened.
A minor crack on the railway track was discovered between Sandhurst Road and Byculla around 8.30 am on Tuesday, and could have proved dangerous had it widened.
Sources in the Central Railway said a gangman, while checking the tracks, found the crack on the fast line towards Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST).
He immediately informed the higher-ups, who instructed motormen running fast locals on that line to restrict speed.
“As fast as we could, we informed the motormen to run trains at 10 kmph on this stretch,” a senior CR official said.
The authorities let a few trains ply on the track hoping that the crack wouldn’t expand and finally carried out repairs by blocking traffic on the track for 20 minutes, around 11 am.
“We couldn’t block the morning peak hour traffic and instead asked trains to run slowly on that stretch.
“Once we had a block in place, we replaced the track with a new one and placed a metal chip,” the official added.
Meanwhile, train services were affected on the fast corridor as they were running late by 10 minutes.
One train was detained at Byculla for more than 15 minutes, while a few of them were made to cross over from the fast to the slow line until the problem was corrected.
Officials maintained that there was no need for commuters to panic.
“The problem wasn’t serious as it was a minor fracture and trains can run on such tracks with restricted speed.
“If the crack had been bigger, then there would have been no option but to carry out repair work immediately,” CR chief PRO, S Mudgerikar, said.