Rare engineering move saves Vande Bharat from technical jam | Mumbai news

MUMBAI: A technical glitch inspired some smart reverse engineering by the Central Railway (CR) to get the Madgaon-bound Vande Bharat back on track on Monday. It was an unusual solution that not only saved time but prevented a massive pile-up of trains on the busy route.

The Vande Bharat in question had departed from CSMT at 5.25 am but stalled as it was approaching Diva station as Point 103 developed a technical snag. As a result, the train couldn’t proceed to the Diva-Panvel corridor, its intended route. “This Point allows trains headed for the Konkan to switch lines in order to shift to the Diva-Panvel rail corridor,” said a senior CR official. “But this was not possible on Monday morning.”

Vande Bharat trains are noted for their speedy travel time but this one had already been detained for 35 minutes, from 6.10 am to 6.45 am. Moreover, other long-distance trains as well as suburban local trains were queuing up behind it, potentially triggering a cascading effect. Since waiting for the Point failure to be fixed would take more than an hour, the Vande Bharat was diverted to Kalyan.

Here’s where it gets interesting. CR sources said that from Kalyan, the train could switch to the fifth line and then to the sixth line, which is the Diva-Panvel corridor, and thus resume its journey to Goa. It was an ingenious but unconventional solution, as the train would have to travel close to 11 km in the reverse direction on the fifth line. “Trains rarely, if ever, travel in the reverse direction but we resorted to this solution to avoid lengthy delays all around,” said a CR official.

“Vande Bharat trains can run in either direction, unlike regular trains, which have locomotives hauling them. Vande Bharat trains don’t require locomotives and can be operated in both directions. So this one reversed and departed from Kalyan at 7.13 am,” said the CR official.

The semi-high-speed train usually completes its Mumbai-Goa journey in 7 hours, 45 minutes. This time, it made it in 9 hours, 37 minutes – but not without some pretty fancy manoeuvring!