Title - Commuters fume as Central Railway trains go off track

MUMBAI: Passengers on the Harbour and Main lines of Central Railway (CR) are angry as train schedules get disrupted every time there is a smart shower in Mumbai. In less than a week, commuters had to bear the hardship on two occasions as trains ran late by nearly an hour.The first instance was on June 28, when trains on the Main line were off schedule by an hour, while Harbour line saw it running later by 20 minutes. Again on July 2, Harbour services were paralyzed, with no announcements and blank indicators at CST around 9 pm and trains running nearly 30 minutes late. The Main line trains were also delayed by 15-20 minutes.Some of the passengers were also frustrated that there were recurring signal failures at Kurla-an important connector between island city and suburbs and also a junction for Harbour line trains."It is disgusting, especially when you have to return home during peak hours and train services are slow," said Sonal Shah. "If this is the scenario at the beginning of monsoon, what will happen when there is non-stop rain for hours?" said Prashant Mhetre, a commuter.But railway officials have their own explanation. "We try our best to run nearly 1,500 trains on the CR network daily," said railway spokesman A K Singh. He said that usually during the first rain, there is a change in temperature on the tracks and on various electrical circuits close to it. "This temporarily affects the working of the circuits and leads to signal failures. But this is only during the onset of monsoon and things will normalize in next few days."

As for the delay on Harbour line, he said, "A tree fell close to the tracks near Govandi and it had to be removed. We have only two tracks (Up and Down) on Harbour route and there is no way to divert the trains on other tracks. It took some time to remove the uprooted tree and this led to delay in arrival of trains at CST."

Another senior official said passenger safety was a priority. "We have to follow the signalling system strictly and if there is any small failure en route, we switch to emergency mode and ensure the trains run at slow speed (20 kmph) so that passengers lives are not put to risk. We are more concerned about ferrying you safely than merely taking you to your destination," the official said.