Title - CR cancels 12 local services | The Asian Age

Though Central Railway’s megablock woes came to an end by Wednesday night, over 12 services were cancelled on Thursday. With the remodelling of the Thane yard, a new track and signalling system were made operational from Thursday onwards. Due to this, motormen and loco pilots were first given learning lessons to become familiar with the new system on that specific route on Thursday morning. A CR spokesperson said, “Our services got delayed due to the route learning sessions. Hence, we had to cancel 12 locals. But 12 services are negligible and passengers did not face any severe problems.” Speaking to this newspaper on the five day-megablock episode, one senior supervising railway officer said, “Normally, when remodelling processes are operationalised at a station, all the services are put on a hold…but stopping the traffic is not our culture, so we decided to carry out the block instead.” In another development, angry commuters beat up the Asangaon station master Kumar Mathur and one other staff on Thursday. Nearly 50-60 commuters gathered outside the station master’s cabin and demanded to halt a mail train so that they could travel in it, as a few scheduled local services had been cancelled. The station master, however, refused to halt the train, inviting the ire of the commuters who then manhandled him. The Kalyan GRP has filed a first information report against 50 to 60 unknown commuters. Earlier, on Wednesday night, incidents of stone pelting had been reported at Thane station, but GRP officials denied it.