It’s the same old story. Thousands of commuters stranded in trains and platforms and nowhere to go while authorities grapple with the situation
Mumbai : Yet another pantograph failure on Central Railway (CR) at Thane station not only crippled the train services on Friday morning but also came close to another ‘Diva Riot’ in the making. Thousands of commuters were stranded in trains and several others on the platforms after an overhead wire at Thane station got entangled with the pantograph resulting in no trains, some of the anti-social elements were beginning to agitate on the tracks when railway officials took stock of the situation.
On Friday morning at 10 am, a Thane-bound slow train which was to terminate at Thane was entering platform number 1 (from the CST end) and was passing over a crossover just before entering the station when the pantograph of the train got entangled with the overhead wires. Due to this the train was stuck between the down slow line (towards Kalyan) and the loop line along platform number 1.
The overhead wires were broken and subsequently the power in the section was turned off. Along the same time, another train on the down fast line was crossing over to the down slow line towards the Kalyan end of Thane station where the power was turned off which caused power tripping on the down fast line as well. Both the down slow and fast lines were blocked following which the up line (towards CST) were also blocked with no trains available.
The senior railways officials got reports of some anti-social elements trying to come down on tracks and agitate which is when they rushed to the spot. A senior railways official said, “We were in the control room monitoring the situation and the train movement following the disruption when we were told some anti-social elements had got on tracks to agitate. We immediately asked the RPF to reach the spot and get the situation under control in the mean while we also rushed to the spot.”
There were constables not only from the Railway Protection Force but also from the Government Railway Police and City police to control the crowd. Alok Bohra, Senior Divisional Security Commissioner of RPF, CR said, “We had deployed over 100 men as a precautionary measure to control the crowd along with GRP and city police.”
With all the four line blocked commuters who were stuck in the train had to jump onto the tracks and find their way to the nearest station. Platform number 1 was blocked until evening and several trains were lined up one after the other. With no train available the crowd at the station kept on swelling with each passing minute.
No train services were available between 9:30 am and 12:20 pm as the slow lines were blocked. The slow trains were diverted on the fast track between Vikhroli and Diva. According to the official figures two up locals (towards CST), 12 down locals (towards Kalyan) were cancelled and six locals were cancelled partially. However, according to sources due to the disruption a total of 50 trains were cancelled while another 150 were delayed. Despite the problem being resolved by 12:30 pm the train were seen running late until the evening peak hours.
Priya Jadhav who reached Mulund station at 10:30 am had to wait for another 30 minutes to board a train for CST. Jadhav said, “The station was cramped and I had to stand on the footboard of the train as it was overcrowded with no place to step inside. The train after leaving from Mulund was stuck for another 30 minutes between Mulund and Bhandup. It picked up speed after crossing Ghatkopar.”
Prabhu directive
With the frequent disruption on Central Railway (CR), Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu has asked the Railway Board (RB) to send a team of officers to examine the problem of frequent electrical equipment breakdown and prepare a time bound action plan to avoid recurrences of such incidents over Mumbai suburban.
Iram Siddique
