Thousands of passengers in Puri Mumbai LTT SF Express via Sambalpur, Titilagarh, Raipur and Nagpur had a tough time en route when it was late by five hours to reach Mumbai on Thursday.
The train started from Puri on Tuesday night around 9 pm and was late by 1.15 hours while reaching Sambalpur on Wednesday morning. It became two hours late when it reached Nagpur in the evening. And instead of adjusting time, it went further late amidst the scorching heat and much to the irritation of the passengers, mainly senior citizens and children.
Although it is a superfast train, it was made to stand at Ghoti station in Maharashtra before Kalyan, a very small station in the route, and two trains crossed it from behind for which it stood for more than 30 minutes.
Mostly people from Odisha go to Mumbai for jobs and medical treatment. But such attitude of the Railways is defeating the very purpose of their travel, alleged many passengers.“I was supposed to join my office at 10 am easily since the arrival time for the train in LTT station is 7.25 in the morning. But practically it reached after 12 pm and hence, I had to take one day CL for no fault of mine. Due to this, my seniors also got annoyed with me,” said Ramesh Sathua, an engineer. “Railway must understand thevalue of time,” he suggested.
Giving a calculation, Sathua said that suppose there were 1,000 passengers in a big train and if it got delayed by five hours, then there was a clear loss of 5,000 valuable man-hours in the country during the day time, he added.
This is just a tip of the iceberg. Most of the express and superfast trains are running late frequently, which causes immense problems and inancial loss to the passengers, he added.
And trains from Odisha are the most neglected ones, said a railway employee, on the condition of anonymity. 12146 apart, train no.18638 and 18452, supposed to reach Sambalpur station in the early morning of Wednesday were running late by more than one hour.