Title - : Trains grind to a halt in Kolkata

Long distance and suburban train services along the Eastern and South Eastern routes were largely disrupted following a power outage in the Eastern and North-Eastern grids on Tuesday.

According to an Eastern Railway spokesperson, 105 trains including 25 mail express were stopped in Sealdah, Howrah and Asansol divisions of Eastern Railway from 1pm as there was no power in the overhead wires.

Trains running along northern routes from Howrah, such as Kalka Mail, Howrah-Dehradoon Doon Express and Howrah-Kathgodam Bagh Express, were cancelled. Eastern Railway authorities tried running some trains with the help of diesel engines. According to officials, the Sealdah-bound Rajdhani Express, Down Patna-Howrah Janshatabdi Express, Down Kalka-Howrah Mail and Howrah-bound Rajdhani Express were hauled from respective stations. Train services resumed after 5 pm in the Howrah division.

Meanwhile, 60 trains in most of the sections in Kharagpur, Adra, Chakradharpur and Ranchi divisions of the South Eastern Railway were stopped.

According to an SER spokesperson, several mail express, suburban and goods trains were stranded at various stations. However, services between Chakradharpur and Jharsuguda in the Howrah-Mumbai Trunk route of Chakradharpur division remained normal.

The Howrah-Digha Kandari Express, both from Howrah and Digha, Shalimar-Visakhapatnam Express from Shalimar, Howrah-Bhadrak Passenger from Howrah were cancelled on Tuesday.

The Mumbai-Howrah Gitanjali Express was held at Santragachi station.

Metro Railway services in the city were, however, unaffected throughout the day.

MINERS TRAPPED

The outage had hit mining operations, especially in the underground mines in the Asansol-based Eastern Coalfields and Dhanbad-headquartered Bharat Coking Coal Ltd (BCCL). As the support services went inoperative due to power outage, many miners were trapped inside the pit till they were evacuated on resumption of power supply.

“Miners are trained to deal with such situations and they assemble in identified galleries till resumption of lift and other support systems,” a CIL official said.

According to him, the trapped miners were rescued in a couple of hours as support systems were brought back into operation in an emergency measure

“All the miners were rescued from underground assets by evening,” the CIL Director-Technical, Mr N Kumar, told Business Line.