Mumbai: Signal glitch causes delay on harbour, trans-harbour lines

Mumbai: A technical glitch affecting signals at Jui Nagar Station on Central Railway’s Harbour line and Trans-Harbour line caused the cancellation of 40 trains and delayed about 35 local train services on Thursday morning. The problem was reported at 6 am and resolved by 7 am, according to a CR official, but due cascading effect local services on the line were running behind the schedule during morning rush hours.

The cancellation and delay of local trains caused inconvenience to commuters at Thane and other stations on the trans-harbour section. Similar chaos was witnessed at stations like Jui Nagar, Kharghar and Sanpada.

A glitch caused the signal at a track-changing point at Juinagar railway station to go on the blink from 6 am. Consequently, suburban services were running only between CSMT to Vashi on the Harbour line and Thane to Nerul on the Trans-Harbour route till the problem was rectified by 7 am,” a CR officer said.

“Although services resumed after the issue got resolved by 7 am, bunching of trains on both routes caused further delays,” he added.

According to a local train commuter, even after the resumption of services, the local trans services were running late up to 20 minutes on the Harbour line.

“Thane station is always crowded but on Thursday morning the trans-harbour section of the station was fully packed,” said Dombivali’s Vilas Majumdar, 45, who works with a Navi Mumbai based firm.

Another frequent commuter from Thane, Naresha Shinde, 34, said, “The Railways need to improve the maintenance schedule to avoid this type of failure during rush hours.”