4th glitch on CR in 10 days

Commuters on Central Railway’s suburban lines have seen services hit and trains run late as many as four times in the last 10 days.

Commuters on Central Railway’s suburban lines have seen services hit and trains run late as many as four times in the last 10 days.

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The latest incident, on Monday morning, saw trains run late by 30 minutes after a Karjat-Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) train’s pantograph (the equipment that transfers electricity from overhead wires to the coach) got entangled with overhead cables at Dombivli, at 7 am. It was fixed only at 8.10 am.

This had a cascading affect and train services were delayed till late afternoon.

“I waited nearly 45 minutes before I could enter a packed CST-bound train,” said Mulund resident Vanita Pal (42).

“We had to divert fast locals to the slow line till the situation returned to normal,” said S. Mudgerikar, chief PRO, Central Railway (CR).

On December 19, signal failure occurred simultaneously at two locations — during morning peak hour, around 9.15 am, between Ghatkopar and Vikhroli, and at Chunnabhati on the Harbour line.

The same day also saw signal failure at Kurla, just before evening peak hour at around 5.15 pm.

On December 17, CR train services were hit after three bogies of a new Siemens local train derailed at Thane, early in the morning.

This led to severe bunching up of train services on the CR network, the situation returning to normal only by late evening, with CR taking six hours to fix the problem.

Central Railway has seen four major derailments on its suburban network in the last two months.

On December 13, a Sunday, adding to the complications of the regular Sunday mega block, an overhead cable caught fire at Ambernath, extending the already frustrating mega block by 45 minutes.

“Every such problem has a range of causes and solutions. So it is difficult to say exactly why these incidents have been occurring,” said a senior official on condition of anonymity as he is not authorised to speak to the media.

The Railway Board at Delhi has asked both the Central and Western Railways to get their act together.

“We have asked both Central Railway and Western Railway to maintain their rakes properly from time-to-time, as safety of commuters is a priority,” S. Khurana, chairman of the Railway Board told Hindustan Times.