PATNA: Showers triggered by cyclone Yaas damaged overhead wires, thereby paralysing the movement of several passenger trains on different routes under the jurisdiction of the East Central Railway (ECR) on Thursday and Friday.
Many trees were also uprooted as heavy rainfall lashed different parts of the state.
ECR’s chief public relations officer (CPRO) Rajesh Kumar told this reporter on Friday, “The movement of special passenger trains was disrupted after a huge tree fell on the rail tracks between the Majhauli and Bettiah stations in the wee hours of Thursday.
Normalcy was restored at 5.
05am on Friday when a track patrolling team cleared the tree.
” Strong winds uprooted another tree on the tracks between the Parasnath and Nimiaghat stations under Dhanbad division of the ECR at 8.
35am on Friday.
Consequently, the Gaya-Asansol special train (03546) was stranded at the Parasnath station for sometime.
“A tree fell on the overhead wires located between Janakpur Road and Bajpatti stations on Thursday.
Traffic movement on the Hajipur-Muzaffarpur route was also suspended temporarily due to the damage caused to overhead wires,” the CPRO said and added that lighting struck the overhead lines between Narayanpur and Silaut stations under Sonepur division at 3.
45am on Thursday, thereby affecting the movement of trains for several hours.
Incessant rainfall also paralysed traffic movement between Bakri and Karagola stations on Thursday night as well as Muzaffarpur and Hajipur stations on Friday morning.
Altogether 11 special trains were detained on the Hajipur-Muzaffarpur route.
The CPRO claimed, “However, all the damaged wires were repaired or changed and trees cleared within a few hours at the affected stations under different divisions of the ECR.
” Meanwhile, the railways controlled the movement of the Sitamarhi-Anand Vihar (04005), Bhagalpur-Jammu Tawi (05097), Hatia-Gorakhpur (05027), Jaynagar-Amritsar (04651), Narkatiaganj-Raxaul (05202), Darbhanga-New Delhi (02569, 02565), Saharsa-New Delhi (02553, 02563), Howrah-Kathgodam (03019), New Delhi-Darbhanga (02570, 02556) and Barmer-Guwahati (05910) specials for a few hours due to heavy rainfall.
Railway staff chain empty rakes: As fear of cyclone Yaas gripped the railway employees of Malda division under the Eastern Railway (ER), they chained empty rakes at the Jamalpur station on Thursday.
“The railways often adopts this safety measure to make sure that empty rakes are not blown away by strong winds during a cyclone,” an ER official said.