The kind of stress on Mumbai's suburban system and its ability to spiral out of control at the smallest provocation was best exemplified by the Diva agitation on January 2 which saw railway property being damaged to the tune of over Rs2 crore, leaving several railway employees injured and the entire stretch paralyzed for the better part of the day.
The technical investigations into the cause of the pantographs of the Badlapur-CST and Kalyan-CST trains getting damaged has put the blame on the loosening of a set of equipment- used as binding tool- called the cotter pin and the swivel clip. These two things hold the ends of the overhead wire, from which the trains draw power, in place.
"It is a simple piece of equipment. However on that day they were loose which led to the pantograph of the trains first entangling with the OHE and then breaking the OHE. This just goes to show that even the smallest and simplest of equipment can create havoc in the over-burdened suburban system in this city," said a senior Central Railway official.
The lack of enough time to maintain its assets and infrastructure is something that is coming to haunt railway officials. "The number of OHE breakages have gone up for the past few years. The older trains are giving trouble. The track fractures have increased because of the higher number of trains being run on them every passing year. All in all it is a recipe for disaster and a Diva-like situation waiting to happen every day," said the official.
The problem of 'variety' has just added to CR's woes, officials said. "We have different makes of trains, the older ones running at 80kmph and the newer ones at 100kmph. The electrical systems between CST-Thane are different (Direct Current) from the rest of the mainline beyond Thane (Alternating Current). There is the pressure to run more freight trains. All this has made the situation extremely precarious," said the official.
CR's assessment of the damage on January 2 showed that 13 look out glass, 31 gauges, 8 man machine interface, 6 man machine interface of public address system, 10 public address system displays, 12 headlights, 11 blinkers, 9 special lights, 14 auxillary head lights, 9 speedometer, 21 switch panels, 11 isolation units, 7 sun shades, about 265 window panes were destroyed in the Diva agitation.
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