There have been frequent failures in the Central Railway’s (CR) mainline as well as the Harbour line. The officials are pointing their fingers at the simultaneous work of converting the Harbour line coaches from nine to 12, and the electrical conversion of the line from Direct Current (DC) to Alternate Current (AC) as the two main reasons for the delay.
Officials said that these glitches would continue till November. “Unfortunately, we have been asked to do both the 12-coach and alternate current work almost together, which is why there are figuratively and literally too many fires to put out,” said an official on condition of anonymity. The officials are also in a hurry to complete the conversion to 12 coaches in the Harbour line before August 15.
However, railway activist Subhash Gupta refuted the claims. “There has been no addition of any new services in sections like CST-Kalyan lines in the past two years, so it’s unlikely they have the pressure of more services,” said Mr Gupta.
About the recent failures in the services, Mr Gupta said that the work on the Harbour line should not have affected the mainline. “It is unlikely that work on the Harbour line is affecting the mainline. The conversion on the mainline has occurred almost a year ago, so they had time to get that system in place at least,” he added.
The most recent failure was seen on Tuesday evening when the fluctuation of the power in the overhead wire at Kopar caused all fast line trains to run only up to Kalyan for more than three hours.
