Mumbai: Train services briefly disrupted on Harbour line, confused passengers come down on tracks

A day after railway minister Piyush Goyal inspected Mumbai suburban system, two separate incidents on Tuesday disrupted morning peak hours on Central Railway. Due to the cold weather, yet another rail fracture took place in the morning hours on the Harbour line.

A rail fracture was found between Chunabhatti and GTB Nagar stations which led to stoppage of trains. This incident happened around 8.30 am after which crowds swelled at stations on the Harbour line.

"The trains were running late by 15-20 minutes and so there was lot of crowd at the platform and inside trains," said A Bhosale, a resident of Vashi.

The CR authorities said that the fracture was rectified by replacing the track by 8.56 am. Many disgruntled commuters also took the social media platforms for pointing out the technical failure.

"During winters due to the sudden change in temperatures, cases of rail fractures occur," said a CR official. Couple of days back there was rail fracture near Sion and Matunga stations on CR which led to delays. 

Apart from this rail commuters came down on tracks at Asangaon station at around 8.30am. The CR officials said that it was not a rail roko but confusion whether a long distance train or local train would leave the platform first. 

"The station master was asked to announce that local train would depart first which was standing next to the long distance train," said J Vishe, a resident of Asangaon. 

People assumed that as usual the long distance train will be given first preference and so in order to trespass, they stood on tracks without realising that the local train standing on the same track was supposed to leave first. Finally the train services resumed by 8.45am.