Flooded tracks derail Mumbai-Pune rail traffic

mangaloretoday.com

Mumbai, July 28: Heavy rainfall in Mumbai and adjoining areas for the last few days threw train traffic off gear between Pune and Mumbai again this weekend, causing inconvenience to thousands of passengers and affecting travels plans of many others. The Mahalaxmi Express, which was stranded in flooded tracks near Vangani railway station for over 10 hours, further led to congestion on the Mumbai-Pune route.

According to Central Railway officials, 18 train services which use this route were cancelled on Saturday and Sunday. The railways have cancelled the Pune-Mumbai-Pune Intercity Express and Mumbai-Hyderabad Express on Sunday.

In addition to cancellation of the services, several trains originating from stations in southern India and supposed to reach Mumbai were short-terminated in Pune due to traffic congestion on the onward route.

Among those short-terminated at Pune were Coimbatore-LTT Mumbai Express, Bengaluru-CSTM Udyan Express, Hyderabad-CSTM Express, MGR Chennai Central-Mumbai Express, Bhusaval-CSTM Mumbai passenger, Pandharpur-Mumbai fast passenger and Vishakhapatnam-LTT Mumbai.

The Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) ran additional buses to deal with increased road traffic between Pune and Mumbai.

In fact, due to the already announced maintenance block of Central Railway on Pune-Mumbai route, the MSRTC had planned to run 180 additional buses to ferry passengers affected by the railway block via road.

This came in handy on Saturday as the Pune pision of MSRTC plied numerous additional buses to Mumbai from its bus depot near Pune railway station.