M A I N   N E W S

Several trains rescheduled
Tribune News Service

NEW DELHI, Jan 2 — Twentytwo important trains including three Rajdhanis and the Kalka and Amritsar Shatabdi had to be rescheduled on Tuesday afternoon and at least 100 major electric power-hauled trains were stranded due to disruption in power supply caused by a major fault in the Northern Grid. All these trains are scheduled to originate from Delhi, New Delhi and Hazrat Nizamuddin stations.

The Northern Railway is hopeful that the situation will normalise by midnight.

Prominent among those stranded due to the disruption were Union Minister for Human Resource Development, Murli Manohar Joshi and his Additional Private Secretary, Chandrika Prasad Upadhyay.

Sources close to Dr Joshi’s family said he was held up on board Prayagraj Express which remained stranded for nearly six hours at Tundla. Dr Joshi was returning from a three-day visit to Allahabad, his constituency. Scheduled to arrive here at 6.40 am, Prayagraj Express reached the Delhi station at 5.45 pm.

The sources in the Railway Ministry told TNS here on Tuesday that the trains that were to leave Delhi after 1 pm had been rescheduled and would now run behind time by three to seven hours.

Trains that have been rescheduled include the New Delhi-Howrah Rajdhani, Delhi-Mumbai Rajdhani, August Kranti Rajdhani, Amritsar Shatabdi, Delhi-Muzaffarpur Express, New Delhi-Howrah Poorva Express, Vaishali Express, Magadh Express, Prayagraj Express, Purushottam Express, Jharkhand Express, Bhopal Express, Mahamaya Express, Intercity Express Lichavi Express, Andhra Pradesh Express, Tamil Nadu Express, Karnataka Express, GT Express, Goa Express, Maha Kaushal Express, Dakshin Express and Janata Express.

The sources said the trains were stranded mid-section between 4.40 am and 8.10 am when the fault occurred in the Northern Grid. “Trains stranded mid-section were pulled by diesel engine to the nearest railway station to reduce the miseries of the passengers.”

Northern Railways Chief Public Relations Officer, Chandralekha Mukherjee said the Kalka Shatabdi was rescheduled at 6 pm instead of 5.15 pm and the Amritsar Shatabdi at 6.30 pm instead of the scheduled departure at 4.30 pm.

She said most areas were made operational by 2 pm. Giving an idea of the extent of the disruption, Ms Mukherjee said the train from Ghaziabad took two and a half hours to reach Delhi. In normal circumstances, the distance between Ghaziabad and Delhi is covered in half an hour. “The telephone system in Delhi collapsed and our Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) collapsed. We had a fallback due to the Uninterrupted Power Supply for our passenger reservation system. We put into motion all our generator and UPS services and tried our best to run trains on diesel engines.”

Ms Mukherjee said the railways have clamped down on goods train operations to clear the route for passenger trains. “We have consciously taken this decision to give precedence to passenger trains. Passengers are on our priority.”

Asked to assess the loss in revenue due to the aforesaid crisis, Ms Mukherjee said, “It is difficult to assess this now but goods trains are our main source of revenue.”

She expressed the hope that operations would normalise by midnight if there are no interruptions.