Crack in track stalls local train services on Mumbai’s trans-harbour route

This comes a day after rains and an overbridge collapse crippled Mumbai suburban train services for hours.

A day after rains and an overbridge collapse crippled Mumbai suburban train services for hours, local train services on the trans-harbour route in the maximum city were stalled on Wednesday as well. the local train services were hit because of crack in a railway track.

The local train services between Thane and Aeroli were stopped because of the crack.

This comes a day after heavy rains in Mumbai led to the collapse of a part of a road over bridge on railway track in Andheri area of Mumbai. The bridge connected Andheri East with Andheri West. The incident left at least six persons injured and crippled local train services on all lines of the suburban rail network. While services on Harbour line could resume by Tuesday afternoon, that on the Western line resumed only late evening.

It was a narrow escape for many as a local train was stopped just metres away from the collapse site, thanks to an alert driver, Chandrashekhar Sawant. Noticing the portion of the overbridge coming down, Sawant slammed the brakes to ensure the local train was not caught under the debris. "It was a regular day when I noticed that the bridge ahead was beginning to come down. My instant reaction was to hit the emergency brakes as far from the crash as possible," he told Zee News.

Since Monday night, the city was battered with more than 131 mm rainfall and the surroundings got between 130-210 mm, leading to waterlogging in places like Kandivali, Jogeshwari, Andheri, Ghatkopar, Santacruz, Sion, Kings Circle, Matunga, Kurla, Chembur, Tilak Nagar and other areas.

With several lakhs of commuters stranded all over the network on Tuesday, many walked down on the railway tracks to the nearest station, and the civic transport body BEST deployed 40 additional bus services between Goregaon and Bandra to clear the rush.

Even though the BMC, railways and other authorities promise better preparedness for the rains every year, Mumbaikars continue to face hardships and this time it is no different.