Title - Rain woes continue to plague Central line

A day after heavy rain brought suburban train services to a crawl, officials of the Central Railway (CR) say that they are helpless against the elements and services are bound to be affected on days when heavy showers hit the city.

Heavy showers yesterday coupled with other problems again disrupted services. According to the IMD, rainfall recorded in the city over the last 24 hours has exceeded 76 mm. Kopar on the Mulund-Thane stretch experienced heavy rainfall in the morning and services were further hit after soil beneath the track of the fast line going towards Kalyan caved in.

Sources in the CR said that the rains added to the woes of the Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation (MRVC), which has been conducting cable-laying work beneath the tracks.

“We were laying cables below the tracks for the purpose of power conversion and upgradation. In the last week we had already laid cables beneath five tracks, but soil caved in while we were working below the sixth track,” said a railway official on condition of anonymity.

This ongoing upgradation work to change power supply from 1,500 volt DC to 25,000 volt AC was going on and the soil caved in at 11.15 am. The situation was brought under control at 1.50 pm, but by then 40 train services had to be cancelled, while services operating on other routes were running 25-minutes late. “One train got stuck between Mulund and Thane due to the cave-in and the issue was resolved at 12.15 pm,” said a CR spokesperson.

Trains were running 10 minutes late throughout the day and even services on the Harbour Line faced the same predicament.

Subodh Jain, general manager of CR, stated that they were facing problems near Thane and on the Kurla-Sion stretch due to the rain, which was affecting train services.

Around five days ago, the CR was forced to cancel 148 services due to signal failures at several stretches as a result of the rain.