Western Railway commuters braved a manic Monday yesterday, after an overhead wire snapped at Borivli station. This resulted in crowds spilling onto the highways, even as auto rickshaws refused to ply due to heavy traffic, all the way till Andheri. App-based cab aggregators were also charging as high as 4.9 times their regular fare.

The trouble began after a pantograph of a Borivli-Churchgate slow local train – which left from platform 2 – got entangled with the overhead equipment (OHE) between Borivli and Kandivli at about 6.30 am. Sources said that the train had not even reached platform 8, located towards the Kandivli end, when the incident occurred. “Yesterday, maintenance work was underway over there. It is possible that its completion might not be clean and some chunks would have remained, leading to the pantograph entangling with the overhead wire,” said a WR official.