Kolkata, Sep 5 (IANS) The trial run on the repaired railways track along the New Farakka Line in West Bengal’s Murshidabad district has been successful, following which the normal train services are expected to begin from Saturday, the Eastern Railway have claimed.
The repair work was successfully completed on Saturday morning following which the trial run started.
Now, an insider from the Eastern Railway said that normal train services will resume from Saturday night.
However, he added that it might take some more time for the train services on the tracks to be fully successful, considering that several trains have to be cancelled and routes of some trains had to be diverted following the landslides occurring on the railway tracks of the New Farakka line on Thursday morning.
Following the landslides, the train services connecting South Bengal to North Bengal were severely disrupted in the last couple of days.
Shivram Majhi, the Chief Public Relations Officer of Eastern Railway, said that repair work on the tracks damaged by the landslide had been completed and the train services are expected to return to normal by Saturday night.
However, the exact time when trains will begin running according to the scheduled timetable has not yet been confirmed.
Eastern Railway officers claimed that the officers and staff engaged in the track repair process had done a commendable job considering the two related hindrance factors that incessant rainfall in the area hampered the repair progress, as the soil at the repair site remained unstable and waterlogged.
It is learnt that like Thursday and Friday, numerous trains have been cancelled on Saturday as well, while several others are being diverted.
The state government is arranging food and water for stranded passengers, and additional buses are being operated across North and South Bengal.
Despite these measures, the difficulties faced by a large number of passengers remain unresolved.
The disruption also led to a sharp increase in demand for private bus services between Kolkata and Siliguri, with fares reportedly rising from around Rs 1,500 on normal days to between Rs 5,000 and Rs 6,000 over the past few days.
–IANS
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