With the suburbs receiving over 88 mm of rainfall this Sunday, Central Railway services took a beating for the second consecutive day. As many as 21 trains were cancelled due to flooding of tracks at Thane, Kalyan and Vidya Vihar.
A Central Railway spokesperson said, “Suburban trains ran 45 minutes behind the schedule due to signal problems at Kalyan, Thane, Kanjur Marg and Vidya Vihar. There was point problem at Thane and Kalyan as well. Twenty one services were cancelled and eight special trains were run.”
A disgruntled official said, “Waterlogging led to the point failure at Thane. This could have been easily avoided, had the drains been cleared of the construction debris that was generated during the recent Thane yard remodeling work.”
To avoid any untoward incident, railway officials had the tracks at Thane and Kalyan clamped and set in a straight line. “Trains were run at regulated speed, which led to the subsequent delays,” said an official. He added that the rainfall caused many signals to fail, as track circuits were not as reliable as digital axle counter (DAC) system. The DAC can count the number of axles of trains crossing and counters are installed at either end of the section concerned.
On the Central Railway section, only 50 per cent of flood-prone locations are equipped with the DAC system. The rest will be fitted by 2014, according to the officials. “Vidya Vihar also witnessed water logging due to construction work. At Kalyan, an under-construction boundary wall blocked the water, while at CST, water could not enter drains because BMC was carrying out the work to strengthen a nullah,” an official informed.
Central Railway said its operations took a beating because it was spread across 200 km, including the Harbour Line section, while in comparison the Western Railway had only 120 km of suburban operations. The commuters at Central Line were surprised to learn that there were no major problems on the Western Line.(MM)
