Title - Railway leases out train for film shoot, 20 commuter services hit

Are film shoots more important for Western Railway (WR) than commuters? Tuesday's incident would make it appear so.
The railway, already facing a shortage of rakes, cancelled 20 services between 8.30am and 4.30pm to, according to sources, lend one of its new-age Siemens trains for a film shoot at Goregaon station.
WR has begun an aggressive campaign to earn revenue from film and commercial shoots. Already, income from such activity has shot up from a few lakhs to nearly a crore in just one year. The railway charges around Rs1 lakh a day for shooting at major stations and a little less at smaller stations. Rent for a train is more than Rs2 lakh.
Western Railway chief spokesperson Sharat Chandrayan denied that the cancellations were due to the train being rented out. Other officials, too, said WR has 92 rakes and one that was out of service was given for the shooting. The cancellations were owing to other problems, they said.
The film in question i s IAS officer Vishwas Patil's debut directorial venture Rajjo, a Hindu-Muslim love story. It has been in the news as Mahesh Manjrekar plays a eunuch in it.
The sources, however, insisted the renting out of the train was linked to the schedule being disrupted. "Most of the cancellations were of nine-car services," one source pointed out. The train that was sent for the shooting was a nine-car one.
Six Churchgate-Andheri trains, two Churchgate-Borivli trains, one Churchgate-Malad, one Churchgate-Bandra, six trains originating from Andheri, three from Borivli and one from Bandra were cancelled.
Western Railway is facing a shortage of rakes as it has not converted all of them to 12-car configuration. Of the 92 with it, 77 are operational on any given day - seven nine-car rakes, 69 12-car, and one 15-car -- running a total of 1,250 services.