In what could be called as a lapse on part of the Central Railway (CR) officials, the authorities did not wait for an internal safety certificate before starting services after the four-day block at Belapur on Monday. This carelessness is probably what led to an overhead wire snapping, resulting in over 100 trains taking a hit on Tuesday.
A CR official, on the condition of anonymity, said, "We are looking at the possibility of the internal safety checks not having been undertaken after the completion of the mega block. This safety check is important to give a go-ahead for the train services to run."
Now, the CR authorities have set up a Committee to investigate whether the OHE failure happened due to shoddy work during the block.
"The Construction department has set up a committee to investigate into the matter. Necessary action shall be initiated if found guilty," said SK Jain, Divisional Railway Manager (Mumbai), Central Railway.
The committee is tasked with checking if the OHE failure on December 26 at Belapur is the result of poor and shoddy work done between December 22-25 as part of the work on Seawoods-Belapur-Uran rail line. The repercussions of the OHE failure were so bad that the poles on which the OHE cables join, had come apart.
Since last night (December 26-27), the CR has undertaken a mega block at Belapur's platform no. 2 that shall go on till 2 am on the night of December 28-29 for restoring all mistakes that apparently occurred after the mega block. They will be unearthing the masts/poles that held the overhead wire which basically snapped because they are not synchronised in alignment.
The officials said that these masts are being put in line as per the schedule of dimension for which new spots have been dug. The 48-hour block until the night of December 29 has led to the cancellation of 34 services. Not only will the services on the Belapur-CSMT route get affected, but also those coming from Panvel will be affected during this period.
WHAT CR SAYS
- A CR official said that there is a possibility that a safety check was not undertake
- A committee has been formed to investigate into the matter
