As rain arrives early this time, Railways speeds up work to be monsoon-ready

“I reached home at 2 am after I was stuck in my local at Vidyavihar from around 11.30 pm. As I had to reach Dombivali, taking another mode of transport at the late hour was not feasible. Thus , I waited with other women commuters in the train till services started,” said commuter Neera Mhale, who also complained of “poor communication” from the railways during the hour of crisis. According to senior railway officials, while more than half of the track-cleaning work is complete, a second check needs to be done. “We are done with our part of cleaning the tracks and removing muck. We are now expecting equal co-operation from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to supply us with the required high-capacity pumps to drain out flood-prone areas. While they generally do so in the first week of June, we will try to get it done early this year,” a senior CR official said.

On Western Railway, officials claim to be ready for light showers. “Seeing the showers in the last two days, we have brought our deadline closer, to May 25 as compared to June earlier. Our work is almost 60 % complete and thus we can claim that the services will run smoothly even if there are more of such sudden showers,” a senior official said. However, what will require more time, officials said, is the repair of signalling systems and coach maintenance. “After DC-AC conversion on the CR last year, we have identified the possible problems with the electrical wiring during the monsoon. We will require at least 20 more days to make the wiring monsoon-ready. Work on leakage checks of some coaches also remains,” the official said.

“We have increased the pace of work due to an early shower this time. Special attention is being paid to maintenance of wiring and equipment to reduce the number of electrical failures,” Ravinder Goyal, Divisional Railway Manager, CR, said. Last year, the CR had a poor show during the monsoon, with signalling and electrical problems topping the list of failures.