Weekend trauma for Sealdah-bound local, long-distance passengers
Times of India | 9 June 2024
Kolkata: The torment for train commuters — long distance and local — continued on Saturday as services to Sealdah remained disrupted for the second day running due to platform extension work. Platforms 1 to 5 are being extended to accommodate 12-car EMU rakes instead of nine.
Long-distance train passengers were badly affected on Saturday. The Down Rajdhani Express couldn’t reach the platform and had to wait outside the station for nearly three hours.The train was supposed to reach Sealdah at 10.10am. It reached at 1pm instead. The Up Rajhani, from Sealdah was delayed as well. Instead of departing at 4.50pm, it left Sealdah after 6pm.
The Bikaner-Sealdah Duronto Express was held up for even longer. Sarthak Sarkar, who boarded Bikaner-Sealdah Duranto Express from Kanpur at 12.40am on Friday night with his family, had a harrowing time. “The train, which was supposed to reach Sealdah at 1.15pm, stopped somewhere after Dum Dum and was still there when I last inquired around 6pm. Fortunately, we had got off and walked to Dum Dum Metro station, took a Metro to reach our Tollygunge residence. By then, it was 5.45pm,” the 21-year-old student of St Xavier’s College said, adding: “It was such a torture… IRCTC had hiked food prices in the bid to make a quick buck.”
At Sealdah, the situation was chaotic as passengers, waiting for two or more hours, desperately climbed on the roof of local trains in an attempt to reach their destinations. Even though many offices were closed on Saturday, overcrowding continued at the station and in trains. Around 80 trains were cancelled on Saturday.
At 2.30pm, Purushottam Bisht, who failed to squeeze into a Gede local after waiting at the station for nearly three hours, said: “This reminds me of the films on Partition, when people travelled like animals to board a train from Pakistan or Bangladesh. Now that I have missed this train, I don’t know when I will get home.” Alpana Das, who also failed to board a Dunkuni local, added: “I shouldn’t have come to work today. Should have taken a sick leave or something. This is an impossible situation.”
Around 150 of the 800-odd EMU locals couldn’t get to Sealdah station and terminated and originated from Dum Dum. “I just came to know about the truncated runs till Dum Dum. This is such harassment,” said Anirban Kar, who had to travel to Barasat to attend a medical emergency of a relative.
Eastern Railway officials pleaded helplessness. “The trains are in queue to enter the platforms because of bunching. The cascading effect will continue till Monday. All timetables are going haywire because the entire signalling system has become manual. Apart from electronic interlocking, which is being installed all over again replacing the old one, the entire system is going through a makeover — from tracks to slippers. We will not get this kind of block again. So we are trying to make the most of this block,” he said.