Thanks to the “rail roko” on Tuesday, the Secunderabad station was full of commuters in the morning, waiting for news about their trains. The passengers arrived at Secunderabad from other places and there were also many waiting for their trains since Monday night. Though the South Central Railway had appointed a help-desk for the passengers, it could not provide much help to the long-distance passengers.
Unlike the MMTS stations, which wore a deserted look on Tuesday, the platforms in the main stations were full of passengers. Most of the stranded passengers were from West Bengal, Orissa and Kerala and the trains heading for Aurangabad, Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Ernakulam etc. were either cancelled or rescheduled.
Mr Vasudev from Orissa said, “I had to go to Ichchapuram on the Visakha Express. I had some important work to attend to and this rail roko has caused problems,” he said. His train was cancelled.
Foreigners Gemma and Lloyd had a tough time too. “We came here from Hampi to go catch the Ajanta Express to go to Aurangabad. We had no clue about the no-train situation. And now our train’s going to come in the evening. We have to wait for seven hours,” said Ms Gemma.
The trains resumed as per the rescheduled time in the evening.
The SCR’s loss was clearly RTC’s gain. According to the railway officials, SCR incurred a loss of nearly `1.5 crores due to cancellation and reimbursement of tickets to passengers. The cancellation of goods services added `7.5 crores to the losses.
The RTC, on the other hand, came to the rescue of the passengers and introduced 200 special bus services, including 50 special long-distance buses to places like Kurnool, Nizamabad, Warangal, Vijayawada and other major places in the state.