Be careful while making your travel plan for coming Sunday, December 19. Slow local services of Central Railway might be shut between Thane and Diva for 18 hours. According to Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation ( MRVC), first major block for connection of existing track to newly laid track via new tunnel will be operated on this Sunday. Probably the block will commence at around 8 am on Sunday which will continue till 2 am on wee hours of Monday.
However during block period fast local services will be available between Thane and Diva, apart from that keep in mind passengers convenience of Thane and Diva section, several slow local services will be also operated on the diverted route ie on fast corridor. Conferming the development a senior railway office said- "we are working about modalities of the proposed block number trains cancelation and diversion will be announce soon".
Asked about the block, Ravi Agarwal, Managing Director of MRVC said, "Most of work of Much awaited 5th 6th line between Diva and Thane completed, only cut and connection of existing tracks with newly laid track, for that we need few major blocks. First major block of 18 hours of this series will be on coming Sunday"
"During block existing down slow line and up slow line will be connected to the newly laid track between Kalva and Mumbra end of tunnel. It's a temporary diversion, which is must for the connection of existing slow track to the newly constructed fly over" further added Mr Agarwal.
The work of 5th, 6th line project between Thane and Diva ( around 9-km stretch) has been ongoing for 11 years now. Initially, it was marred due to encroachments and later technical glitches. The trials will begin after this long work, after which it will be opened for the public. The deadline for the project, sanctioned in 2008, was December 2015, which was revised to December 2017, then to March 2019, June 2020, December 2021 and now March 2022. The cost has escalated from about Rs 130 crore to Rs 440 crore.
The completion of this project will boost the central railways carrying capacity. “The fifth and sixth line between Thane and Diva will segregate express trains and local train services on CR. It will pave the way for the introduction of additional local services on the main line," a CR official said.
Thane-Diva is the CR’s busiest section in the suburban network. The 9 km-stretch between Thane and Diva currently has only four lines on to which six lines (Diva-Kalyan and Thane-Kurla Lokmanya Tilak Terminus) converge, creating a bottleneck that obstructs and delays local suburban and outstation trains.
