Partial rail traffic restored
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, Dec 7 — The railways managed to restore partial traffic on the damaged New Delhi- Ambala section by running three express trains at a controlled speed and some goods trains. However, the diversions of all other express trains caused delay to travellers for the fifth consecutive day today.

six express trains will be run at a controlled speed of 30 km per hour tomorrow on the damaged section. Complete restoration of traffic is likely by December 10, sources said today. The mail lying at various stations has been picked up and delivered at the stations concerned .

Engineers are conducting "ultrasound fault detection" on the track that has been repaired at over 100 places during the past five days. Through this technique a fault, in the track automatically shows up. No chances are being taken before starting the operation of major trains, sources said.

For tomorrow the trains that will pass on the New Delhi-Ambala section are the New Delhi-Amritsar Express, the New Delhi-Jalandhar Superfast and Shan-e-Punjab. Besides these, Dadar express, Jammu Mail and Flying Mail will run tomorrow also. Shan-e-Punjab will run between New Delhi and Amritsar tomorrow but not on December 9. The same train, on its reverse leg, has been cancelled for tomorrow but will run on December 9.

The position of movement of trains northwards from Delhi will be no better tomorrow as the railways has cancelled seven trains, terminated 2 trains midway and diverted several trains away from the Delhi- Ambala section. Among the cancelled trains are the New Delhi-Amritsar Shatabdi.

The diversions have been delaying thousands of rail passengers daily, besides leading to crowding in buses and harassment to daily commuters who depend on trains to reach their places of work.

The track was damaged five days ago and since then one of the two tracks has been closed. While trains moving north from Delhi were diverted either eastward of Delhi from Shamli-Saharanpur or westward of Delhi via Rohtak-Jind-Narwana- Jhakhal-Dhuri to reach their respective destinations in the north. Trains going from Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir were going on the Ambala- Delhi route.

All major and long-distance trains were running late between two and four hours. The Shatabdi's between New Delhi and Chandigarh and the Swaran Shatabdi between New Delhi and Amritsar were delayed by nearly three hours each. With the late arrival of the Shatabadi's several functions involving VIPs from Delhi had to be cancelled or were delayed.

The evening Shatabdi has been arriving here around midnight. Several tickets have been reportedly cancelled by travellers who can reach sooner in their own vehicles.

Kalka mail that reaches Chandigarh in the morning was two hours behind schedule while Himachal Express, Malwa Express, Paschim Express, Swaraj Express, Himalyan Queen were delayed.