Despite relatively less rains as compared to Saturday, commuters of the Central Railway continued to have a rough ride on both the Harbour and main lines on Sunday.
Despite relatively less rains as compared to Saturday, commuters of the Central Railway (CR) continued to have a rough ride on both the Harbour and main lines on Sunday. Interestingly, even though the scheduled mega block to carry out maintenance work had been cancelled on the Harbour line, it suffered the worst delays.
The main line, on which the administration had effected only a small diversion - the fast trains which were diverted on the Up slow line between Mulund and Matunga stations halted at all stations between Mulund and Sion during the block period from 9.50am to 4.51pm - was also affected.
In the earlier part of the day, services on the main line witnessed an average delay of 10-15 minutes. Subsequently, all trains going towards Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) were delayed by at least 20 minutes.
For commuters on the Harbour line, altering their commute as per the scheduled mega block proved counterproductive. The CR had announced that between CST and Kurla stations on the Down Harbour route, services will not be operational from 10.39am to 3.53pm. However, the block was cancelled without any official announcements made on the public announcement system. Further adding to the confusion, services towards Vashi, Belapur and Panvel ran late by at least 40-45 minutes, according to railway officials.
Also, many indicators on the station platforms were not functioning. Rajesh Shinde, a commuter who wanted to travel to Belapur from Chunabhatti, said he waited nearly an hour at Chunabhatti station before a Panvel local packed with commuters, quite an unusual situation for a Down journey on a Sunday afternoon, pulled into the platform. Services towards CST were also running 15-20 minutes behind schedule.
It was only marginally better for commuters of the Western Railway (WR). Despite no traffic block affecting operations during the day, trains were 15-20 minutes late. A commuter who travelled from Dahisar to Dadar said, “I had to wait for a fast train for about 15 minutes. Many people on the platform were complaining about the delay in services even though the rainfall was far less than that on Saturday.”
The official spokespersons for both the CR and WR refused to admit that there was a delay in operations.
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