Ahmedabad-Mumbai Vande Bharat delayed after automatic door glitch

Ahmedabad-Mumbai Vande Bharat Express stranded for 50 mins at Surat due to technical failure, automatic doors not opening. Reached Mumbai Central 1 hour late.

MUMBAI: The Ahmedabad-Mumbai Vande Bharat Express was stranded for 50 minutes on Monday at Surat railway station after a technical failure led to its automatic doors not opening. As a result, passengers could not get in or out of the train at Surat until the issue was fixed. The train eventually reached Mumbai Central station after an hour’s delay.

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Conventionally, the automatic doors open on the driver’s command when the train’s speed drops below 5 kph. But on Monday, one coach malfunctioned due to non-recognition of the command, sources said.

According to Western Railway (WR) officials, the problem area was likely in the C13 coach, but since the system to open and close the automatic doors is the same for all coaches, none of them opened when the train reached Surat station.

The railway staff had to manually tweak the switches of all the doors in the 16-coach train; each coach has four doors. “The operating and maintenance team is investigating the cause of failure,” said a WR official.