Passengers stranded for nearly 10 hrs at Ratnagiri after train derails

In the wake of yet another derailment on Konkan Railway passengers of an Express train were stranded at Ratnagiri for nearly ten hours after a goods train veered off the tracks the previous day and threw operations out of gearThe train schedule went haywire after a goods train derailed near Chiplun on Tuesday PicPTIThe Rajyarani Express arrived in Ratnagiri at 330 am yesterday and only left from there in the afternoon at 1 pm Train movement on Konkan Railway went haywire after a goods train derailed near Chiplun on Tuesday around 745 amOn Tuesday evening 11004 SawantwadiDadar Rajyarani Express was the first train to leave from the region for Mumbai and after a slow crawl through Sindhudurg Kankavli it pulled into Ratnagiri at 330 am on WednesdayPassengers waited for ten long hours without electricity in the train Some chose not to board the train as it left Ratnagiri finallyThereafter the train halted for more than ten hours with passengers having no idea when it would move ahead This correspondent was one of the passengers on the trainFacing the heatWhile people somehow managed to sleep through the night the day only brought more misery with the sweltering October heat There was no electricity in the train mdash this meant the fan blades wouldnrsquot move The situation was worse in the AC compartment with travellers having been cooped into a hot train without any open windowVinod Pednekar one of the commuters said ldquoNo fan or light is working Itrsquos all mismanaged we know that there was a derailment but if they started their journey they shouldrsquove seen to it that everything is taken care of We have paid for these services and while boarding the train they didnrsquot even inform us about the difficultiesrdquoSome said they wouldnrsquot have boarded the train at all had they known it would stop at stations for hours on end Fahad Amandare claims he had to wait nearly four hours to board the train and that at the station there was no announcement ldquoI have to go to Mumbai but the train is here It is very disturbing that at the station there is no announcement whether the train will leaverdquo he saidMismanagementA senior railway official blamed it on the higherups saying they were unable to estimate how much time would be required to restore normalcy These officials he said had asked train services to be started prematurely thereby leading to the chaosSome passengers met the stationmaster G Kove and registered their protest against the bad treatment meted out to them Officials sought to explain that the trainrsquos batteries get charged while it is in motion and when it is stationary for a long time external supply is required to be fedKove said ldquoWhatever information we have been receiving from our senior officials we have been relaying to passengers We were expecting the problem to be rectified soon but it is taking some more time and hence the train has been halted at Ratnagiri The reason there is no electricity in coaches is that we do not have sufficient cables providing electricity from an external source to connect to the interior coachesrdquoWhen the train finally left Ratnagiri at 1 pm some chose to not board it Around 130 pm free food packets were distributed to all passengers It finally reached Dadar at 1005 pm 15 hours after its scheduled arrival time of 645 am