Karnataka: Passengers suffer as trains arrive hours late

Bengaluru: Several passengers to the city were badly inconvenienced as trains to Bengaluru were delayed for  hours on Thursday owing to work on replacing an old track between Hanakere and Mandya  in the Bengaluru section of the South Western Railway.

While the Mysuru-Jaipur Express arrived over three hours late, the Tipu Super Fast arrived over two hours late as did a couple of other trains. Several passengers alighted from the trains and either hired private taxis or boarded KSRTC buses to reach Bengaluru to catch other trains for their onward journeys.

But others, who were hoping to catch the Chennai-bound Double Decker Super Fast train, missed it as they were on the Tipu Super Fast, which  reached the city at 4:10 pm as against the scheduled 1:50 pm, having stopped for over 50 minutes at Byadarahalli Railway Station and for around 45 minutes at the Yeliyur Railway Station.

Angry passengers accused the railway authorities of failing to inform them about the likely delay and demanded to know why the public address system was not used at both the Byadarahalli and Yeliyur stations to keep them in the loop of things. "The railways talk of modernisation, but don't they have a system in place to at least inform passengers about a possible delay in reaching Bengaluru Railway Station due to track repair work?” asked Mr Krishnamurthy from Chennai.

Mr Parthasarathy of Mysuru, who had an appointment at 2:30 pm in Bengaluru, fumed at the apathy of the railway officials, wondering why the Bengaluru-bound trains were not allowed to run on a parallel track if the usual one was under repair. “ Of late punctuality of trains has gone for a toss. Who will compensate me for the loss of business I have suffered?" he demanded angrily.When contacted, a senior officer of the SWR said the work on replacing the track in the Mysuru-Bengaluru section was carried out Thursday morning as it was very old and needed attention.