Delays at India railway stations due to fog

Date: 28/12/2012

Rail passengers in India have experienced delays to their services, due to dense fog in areas such as Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and eastern Rajasthan.

The majority of the trains bound for Jaipur on Thursday were running late, with road transport also finding it difficult to cope with the climatic conditions, reports the Times of India.

Chaotic scenes were prevalent on the highways between Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh as motorists slowed down in order to navigate in the fog.

A number of other parts of the state were also shrouded in fog, including Dausa, Bharatpur and Dholpur, which made travelling difficult.

The extent of the impact on passengers was seen at the Durgapura, Gandhi Nagar and Jaipur railway stations, as many people were forced to wait for hours for their trains.

Among those that were delayed were the Puja Express, Shatabdi Express, Aashram Express and Howarh-Jodhpur Express, according to officials at the Jaipur division of North Western Railways.

Further to this, trains travelling to Kota via Delhi were also held up, with a number of services arriving at the Kota junction railway station hours late.

Those who had opted to travel by bus between Jaipur and Agra found that their journey took at least seven hours, as visibility on parts of the highway was restricted by the fog.

This is not the first time this month that the weather has caused disruption to train services in parts of India, with helplines set up to ensure that passengers get the most up-to-date information about whether their trains are running.

They can also make use of a new system introduced by Southern Railway on its website called Rail Radar, which tracks trains, if they are travelling on routes such as that between Bangalore and Chennai.

A railway official explained the knock on effect of trains running late: "It will take some time to clear delayed trains before operating regular schedules on time."

Posted by Nick Anderson

International Transport News and Sustainable Transport News