Mumbai Passengers on the Vellankanni (Tamil Nadu)-Lokmanya Tilak Terminus (LTT) Express were irked when the railways announced that their train will be terminated at Thane station on Friday midnight, instead of LTT.
While some refused to deboard the train, some approached the station manager at Thane and forced Central Railway (CR) to continue the journey to the original destination. According to CR officials, this was a decision taken from an operational point of view as the train was running four hours late.
The Vellankanni – LTT special train departed from Vellankanni at 2:35 pm on September 8 and was scheduled to arrive at LTT on September 9 at around 8:30pm. However, the train was delayed and arrived at Thane station at midnight, which is when an announcement was made that the train will be terminated at Thane.
“There were guards who entered the train and asked us to vacate. As we were already inconvenienced by the lack of water supply and a few other issues on the train, we were not keen on deboarding before the scheduled arrival. For many of us, our relatives were waiting at LTT to pick us up. While some of us stayed put, a few others approached the station master at Thane station,” said Oliver Pereira, 54, a passenger who had a reservation in Sleeper class coach.
Meanwhile, another senior citizen passenger who resides in Sion, Joseph Fernandes (69), said, “I was returning from a pilgrimage to Vellankanni. At midnight finding a mode of transport from Thane to reach Sion with my luggage would have been quite tedious for me.”
After almost 45 minutes of persistence by passengers, the train headed towards LTT. “If the decision to terminate train at Thane was not executed, everyone would have reached LTT within 15 minutes. Everyone ended up wasting a lot of time arguing and explaining,” added Pereira.
An officer from CR said, “The train was running late by almost 3.5 hours and from an operational point of view, it becomes difficult to make a platform available for the train. As this train had stops at Kalyan and Thane as well and many passengers alighted at these stations, the decision to terminate was taken.”