Train services in parts of NE states to start on Sunday: Officials

Guwahati/Agartala: Railways officials on Saturday said that normal train services are expected to start on Sunday in Assam’s Lumding-Badarpur Hill Section after the regular train services remained disrupted for the third day following the derailment of a loaded goods wagon.

Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) Chief Public Relations Officer (CPRO) Kapinjal Kishore Sharma said that senior officials and engineers are at the site to supervise the restoration work and normal train movement is expected to start on Sunday.

“Efforts are in full swing to restore the movement of regular train service between Tripura, Manipur, Mizoram, southern Assam and the rest of the country via Guwahati,” the NFR official said.

He said that trial runs with light engines and goods trains are going on to ensure 100 per cent safety.

“Regular passenger train movement is expected to start from Sunday morning once full safety is ascertained,” the CPRO told IANS.

Sharma said that the train services in the hill section had to be suspended since the afternoon of Thursday (October 31) due to the derailment of a loaded wagon of one goods carrying train inside a tunnel.

According to Railway officials, more than a dozen trains continue to remain cancelled on the Lumding-Badarpur Hill Section while some others are either partially cancelled or rescheduled.

A wagon of goods train carrying food grains from northern India derailed inside a tunnel near Mupa in the Lumding-Badarpur Hill Section of Southern Assam on Thursday afternoon.

The mishap happened when the rice-laden goods train was heading towards Silchar in Southern Assam.

Last month, the normal train services were affected on October 17 and 18 also, when six coaches, an engine and the power car of Mumbai-bound Agartala-Lokmanya Tilak Terminus Express derailed on the same Lumding-Badarpur Hill section.

Notably, many express and local trains connecting Manipur, Southern Assam, Tripura and Mizoram pass through the single track of the Lumding-Badarpur Hill section located in the mountainous Dima Hasao district.

People of southern Assam, Tripura, Mizoram and Manipur bear the brunt of floods during monsoon every year while the railway tracks, stations and other infrastructure get damaged due to flooding and landslides during the four-month-long monsoon from June to September.