Title - No relief in sight for passengers Long-route trains continue to run late as mercury dips further

Ludhiana: With the mercury dipping further, the flow of rail traffic, which has been erratic for quite some time now, has been further affected.The adverse impact of the cold weather on the trains running on the Delhi-Ludhiana-Amritsar section was evident after the national capital recorded its lowest temperature in the last 20 years on Thursday. The Shatabdi trains -- New Delhi-Amritsar and New Delhi-Ludhiana -- as well as New Delhi-Amritsar Shane Punjab were running 45 minutes to an hour late, while Delhi-Pathankot Express and Delhi-Jammu Tawi Express were also running behind schedule by 1 hr 10 mins and 3 hrs 10 mins respectively.Other trains bearing the brunt of the bad weather included Mumbai-Jammu Tawi Swaraj Express (late by 1 hr 40 mins) and Indore-Jammu Tawi Malwa Express (late by 3 hrs 35 mins), which also pass through New Delhi.According to railway officials, the trains running behind schedule included Ajmer-Jammu Tawi Pooja Express (12 hrs 5 mins), Tatanagar-Jammu Tawi Express (6 hrs 30 mins), Guwahati-Jammu Tawi Amarnath Express (6 hrs 50 mins), Saharsa-Amritsar Jansewa Express (8 hrs 45 mins), Kochuveli-Amritsar Superfast Express (2 hrs), Saharsa-Amritsar Garib Rath (3 hrs 30 mins), Jaynagar-Amritsar Shaheed Express (3 hrs 5 mins), Darbhanga-Amritsar Jannayak Express (4 hrs 45 mins), Katihar-Amritsar Amrapali Express (5 hrs) and Amritsar-Saharsa Jansewa Express (6 hrs 15 mins).

Passengers waiting for hours at the railway station complained that the railways had left them to fend for themselves. "Those deployed at the enquiry counters are either ill-informed or they deliberately provide incomplete and vague information about the status of the trains, adding to our misery as we wait on the platforms in this cold weather," said Akhilesh Srivastav, who had been waiting for more than five hours to board a train to Bihar.