Work underway to resume normal train services in parts of NE: NFR officials

The Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) engineers and workers are working on a war footing manner to fully repair the damaged railway track in Assam’s Lumding-Badarpur Hill Section, where a loaded goods train wagon derailed on October 31, officials said on Wednesday.     

Due to the ongoing repair work normal train services were also affected disrupting the normal supply of essential commodities, food grains, and transport fuel to southern Assam, Tripura, Manipur and Mizoram.

A senior NFR official said that after partial repair of the damaged railway track, train services resumed in Lumding-Badarpur Hill Section under Southern Assam’s Dima Hasao district on November 3 but fully loaded and normal train services could not be resumed.

“The normal train service including passenger and goods trains is expected to be started on Thursday or latest by Friday. The repair work is going on in a war footing manner.

“Halting the train services (both passengers and goods train) for four to five hours every day, repair works are going on to restore the normal train services at the earliest,” the official said.

He said that some trains were either cancelled or rescheduled for undertaking repair works between the Dihako-Mupa sections of the Lumding division, the official added.

All the Express, passenger, local and goods trains connecting Manipur, Southern Assam, Tripura and Mizoram pass through the single track of the Lumding-Badarpur Hill section under the mountainous Dima Hasao district.

The Lumding-Badarpur Hill section under the NFR is the lone railway route to connect Manipur, Southern Assam, Tripura and Mizoram with the rest of the country via Guwahati.

Railway officials said that a wagon of the Silchar-bound goods train carrying food grains from northern India derailed inside a tunnel near Mupa in the Lumding-Badarpur Hill Section on October 31.

More than a dozen trains were cancelled on the Lumding-Badarpur Hill Section between October 31 and November 2 while some others were either partially cancelled or rescheduled during this period.

Meanwhile, the normal train services were affected on October 17 and 18, when six coaches, an engine and the power car of Mumbai-bound Agartala-Lokmanya Tilak Terminus Express derailed on the same Lumding-Badarpur Hill section.

People of southern Assam, Tripura, Mizoram and Manipur bear the brunt of floods during monsoon every year while the railway tracks, stations and other infrastructure get damaged due to flooding and landslides during the four-month-long monsoon from June to September.

In view of the disruption of train services, the supply of essential commodities, food grains, diesel and petrol remains badly affected in Manipur, Southern Assam, Tripura and Mizoram.

To cope with the crisis of transport fuel, the Tripura government on Sunday (November 10) imposed restrictions on the sale of petrol in the state.

Tripura’s Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Department Director Sumit Lodh in a notification said that in view of the supply constraint of petrol in the state, following the disruption of goods trains services in the Lumding-Badarpur section of NFR coupled with the bad condition of the National Highway-8, rationing on the sale of petrol to two-wheelers, three-wheelers and various other vehicles were started from Sunday.