WR to clean drains, build walls

MUMBAI : After flooded railway tracks at Nalasopara station disrupted train connectivity for days, Western Railway (WR) has announced measures to resolve the flooding and chaos that followed the downpour earlier this week.

“Three things will be done. First will be cleaning of drains and clearing water using pumps. Second will be building walls behind platforms. Finally, we are locating areas where tracks need to be raised,” said AK Gupta, general manager, WR.

The decision to raise walls is to keep water from outside entering the station and submerging the tracks. To begin with, the zonal railway will extend the wall between the highway and the station by 50-100 metres. The Vasaivirar City Municipal Corporation has been asked to build two culverts to prevent the tracks from being flooded. Gupta said this project has been given an in-principal approval.

Gupta added that the Bombay high court’s suggestion, from earlier this week, of raising the tracks, was being explored. The problem is that the road and foot overbridges at Nallasopara station might be obstacles to the height of tracks being raised.

WR estimates it will take another week to repair the damaged trains, but Gupta said suburban services were not likely to get disrupted due to this because there are enough extra rakes to run the required number of daily services.

Gupta had inspected the flooding at the station on Monday after approximately 200mm water flooded the tracks. On Tuesday, the water level touched almost 600mm and damaged 14 trains. Operations had to be suspended in the area for more than 24 hours.