Mumbai : The services on Western Railway came to a standstill for about 30 minutes during the morning peak hours on Wednesday after the signal panel at Andheri station went blank. All the signals between Andheri and Santacruz turned red at 9:19 am bringing the trains to a halt.
With no trains available, the crowd on the platforms kept swelling by the minute. The trains, on the other hand, lined up one after the other on all the four up and down tracks. Thousands of commuters waited hopelessly for the trains for about an hour with a poor public address system adding to their misery by making inaudible announcements about cancellations. As bad luck would have it, not just the signaling panel but the over head wires at Andheri had also tripped, disclosed a railway official.
According to sources in WR the panel system was restored at 9:44 am; however, due to the 25-minute complete shutdown of signals, 39 services had to be cancelled while another 100 trains were delayed. The trains ran 25 to 30 minutes late for next one hour, even after the problem was resolved.
Abhishek Gupta, a resident of Andheri, said, “I had to wait for about an hour for a train as many which came were over crowded. The announcements that were made on the platform regarding cancellation of the trains were also not audible. I reached my work place an hour late.”
Not only the suburban services but also long distance Mumbai-bound trains, such as August Kranti Rajdhani, Flying Rani and Valsad Express, were caught up in the snarls and got delayed.
However, there was no official confirmation about the cancellation from WR authorities.
The PRO of WR said, “There was some technical problem which caused the failure. However, it will take some time to determine the cause of the failure. The trains were running late by 15 minutes even after the problem was resolved as there was bunching of trains.”
Incidentally, the Central Railway commuters too faced hardship due to a rail fracture. The fracture was detected between Sion and Matunga at 11:55 am. Result: the trains crawled on the slow line towards CST and had to be diverted on to the fast line between Vidhyavihar and Matunga. The fracture was rectified at 12:15 pm, following which normal services resumed. However, until the track was restored, five services had to be cancelled and several others were running late by 15 to 20 minutes.
Another minor fire broke out on a pole at Kurla station due to the ongoing work by the Mumbai Railway Vikas Corporation. But, thankfully, train services were not affected.
