Central Railway calls emergency block from today

Mumbai: In a goof-up and an attempt to cover up the allegedly shoddy work at Belapur in relation to the Seawoods-Uran line, the CR has taken an emergency block stopping all originating and terminating trains at Belapur from 2 am Wednesday morning to Friday 2 am.

The continous work with the overhead wire will also affect services through Harbour that is Panvel-CSMT. Sources said that the four-day block was wrapped up without the safety certificate on Monday. This caused the incident at Belapur because the overhead wire snapped causing over 100 trains to be cancelled. An official said, “Not only services between Balapur and CST, but the entire Harbour is going to be hit for the next 48 hours.” In these next 48 hours, the CR will be undoing the mistakes they made for the last five days, said sources.

Another official said, “The Harbour has been  shoddy job, there is no other way of saying it. We will be unearthing the masts that held the overhead wire which basically snapped because they  are not synchronised and these masts will be put next to line after new spots are re-dug and placed on the line.”

This year In disruptions

• In November, 33 services were cancelled when a similar snap in the overhead wire caused the wire to be entangled
• In October, the train services on Kalyan-CST route were disrupted after an overhead wire broke between Thakurli and Kalyan stations
• In May, an overhead wire broke at Panvel
• In March, 16 services were cancelled when a Khopoli-bound trains pantograph got stuck between Vidyavihar and Kurla stations