Hyderabad: Rail passengers at Secunderabad Railway Station were a harassed lot on Friday as some trains scheduled to reach the station were diverted through a different route due to several breaches in railway tracks.
Some trains supposed to start from Nampally and pass via Secunderabad were diverted via Begumpet. This became necessary as the original route Nadikudi-Pidiguralla-Guntur section suffered five major breaches and had to be shut down temporarily.
Chennai Express was scheduled to depart at 5.15 pm from Secunderabad station but was diverted via Begumpet.
“This is atrocious. We were not even informed. We can understand rains have breached tracks. But it is the responsibility of the officials to inform each and every passenger who has reserved tickets that trains have been diverted within the city and would not touch Secunderabad. What will we do taking a full refund? Reaching Chennai in time is of paramount importance,” said T. Sridhar,
Sudheendra, Md Sadatullah, Maheshwari and many others who were stranded at Secunderabad station as they failed to catch the train.
Railway staff at the station said SMS alerts were sent to all reserved passengers based on mobile phone numbers given in reservation form.
“If someone else had booked the ticket and the mobile phone number of the passenger was not given, the SMS could have gone to that phone,” a staff member said.
In-charge manager of Secunderabad Railway Station Mr Vincent Paul said they were trying to accommodate the stranded passengers in other trains.
Earlier, South Central Railway general manager Mr Ravindra Gupta said restoration work on the three of the five major breached tracks was taken up and was expected to be completed by Saturday afternoon.
However, the train services continued to be badly hit. The South Central Railway totally or partially cancelled over 60 more trains on Friday and those scheduled for Saturday, bringing the total cancellation of trains to over 100.
