Thane: Quick thinking by the Central Railway to deploy extra rakes helped save the day for thousands of office goers and festive travelers from Thane, suburbs after an empty rake derailed right outside Kalwa car shed Saturday morning blocking path of others waiting inside.The first set of wheels of a rake pulling out of the car shed slipped off the tracks around 7am. As the incident occurred at the exit of the car shed, it blocked the exit path of eight rakes waiting inside which were to leave for Thane and then depart towards Mumbai. Officials said that ideally, the railways would have been forced to cancel these trips resulting in disruption of services throughout the day.However, the railways promptly used the Kalyan-end exit of the car shed to remove stranded rakes and also deployed extra ones from Kurla to mitigate the problem which could have otherwise escalated during the morning peak hours. There was considerable traffic of passengers including those working in the private sector and travelling for Ganesh darshan.“Two rakes were sent to Dombivli and later brought empty to Thane and operated as special services. Meanwhile, two spare rakes from the Kurla car shed were also brought in to minimize the impact of the cancellations. Only four rakes got stranded in the car shed due to the incident and luckily the crowd was managed. The cause of derailment will be investigated,” said A K Jain, senior public relations officer at the Central Railway.Meanwhile, few commuters including those planning to travel to Mumbai for Ganpati darshan complained of late running trains on Saturday morning despite it being a bank and government holiday. “Trains were crowded and running behind schedule since morning. We finally had to reschedule our pandal visit plans to afternoon,” said a family from Dombivli.Several others passengers had to travel to their respective workplaces by hiring cabs or autos as all the Mumbai-bound trains arriving at Kalwa were packed beyond capacity, said commuter activist Siddhesh Desai of the Kalwa Parsik Pravasi Sanghatana.

Stay updated with all the Latest Thane headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.