Kalyan-Karjat section services were stalled immediately at 5.53 am only to resume around 4.42 pm
Thousands of Mumbaikars were inconvenienced and lakhs of man-hours were lost after five coaches of a local train plying between Kurla and Ambernath on Central Railway derailed near Vithalwadi station close to Kalyan. The incident took place at 5:53am on Thursday and fortunately there were no injuries to passengers.
The Kalyan-Karjat section was stalled immediately after the incident leaving commuters beyond Kalyan towards Karjat at the mercy of buses being run by local civic bodies, all of which proved wholly inadequate due to the sheer passenger volumes. Shuttle train services were run between Ambernath and Karjat but being only a few, it did not do much to reduce the crowds. 66 special suburban services were run in all, said CR officials.
While the line towards CST — called Up line in railway terminology — was given the safety all-clear at 9:10 am and the first train on it — a Badlapaur-CST local — ran at 9:23am, the Down line on which the coaches derailed was out of operations till 4:30 pm in the evening. The first train to leave from Kalyan to Karjat after the incident left at 4:42pm. In a statement, CR said that 163 suburban services were cancelled due to the derailment.
Several trains between Mumbai and Pune like the Deccan Queen and the Intercity were cancelled in both directions for the day. Trains from CST moving towards other cities like Bengaluru, Bhubaneshwar, Visakhapatnam, Kolhapur, Hyderabad, Chennai among others were diverted on the Thane-Diva-Panvel-Karjat line. Trains coming into Mumbai from these cities also were diverted on this Panvel-Karjat route. These trains faced delays due to the detour.
The incident once again has highlighted the breakdown of operational efficiency of CR's suburban system, agreed some officials DNA spoke to. "The amount of money that needs to be spent on the suburban system to keep it going is in the range of Rs 3000 crore. The amount that actually gets spent might be in the region of Rs 350 crore. You can't expect to run such an ill-maintained system and expect everything to go on like clockwork day after day," said an official.
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Several trains between Mumbai and Pune like the Deccan Queen and the Intercity were cancelled in both directions for the day. Trains from CST moving towards other cities like Bengaluru, Bhubaneshwar, Visakhapatnam, Kolhapur, Hyderabad, Chennai among others were diverted on the Thane-Diva-Panvel-Karjat line. Trains coming into Mumbai from these cities also were diverted on this Panvel-Karjat route. These trains faced delays due to the detour.
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