Problem to continue for another 2 days

Commuters travelling on the central and harbour lines will have to face some inconvenience on Thursday and Friday. The Central Railway (CR) has said that it will need at least two days to normalise operations and during this period it will curtail 15% of its suburban services. Kailash Korde reports.

Commuters travelling on the central and harbour lines will have to face some inconvenience on Thursday and Friday. The Central Railway (CR) has said that it will need at least two days to normalise operations and during this period it will curtail 15% of its suburban services.

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“We are planning to run 85% of the scheduled suburban services on April 19,” said Vidyadhar Malegaokar, chief public relations officer of CR, adding that Kurla cabin restoration work was already underway.

A 15 % cut in the trains means at least 225 to 250 of CR’s daily 1,573 scheduled services will be cancelled. Besides, delay of 20-25 minutes in running the trains is also expected as the work to repair the signal system and crossing points between Kurla and Vidyavihar will continue.

For the convenience of passengers, the CR has decided to allow commuters with valid ticket or pass to travel in its long-distance trains as well as on the western line. “Certain long-distance trains will halt at all the stations between Kalyan-Kasara and Kalyan-Karjat,” said Malegaokar.

The fire at Kurla and Vidyavihar cabins was caused by a short-circuit. A faulty current apparently caused the fire due to which all the signaling and crossing points between Sion to Ghatkopar become non-functional.

Because of the failure of signals, the CR had to switch to manual piloting of trains between Kurla and Vidyavihar. Later trains were run with restricted speed.