Metro Blue Line: Signalling issues disrupt services

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 11

Delhi Metro rail services on line three (Blue Line) were affected twice today (morning and evening) due to a technical snag that caused trouble to thousands of commuters on Dwarka to Noida and Vaishali tracks. The train movement was so slow that it covered a distance of 25 minutes in one hour.

There were delays across the over 50-km-long line due to "recurrent Track Circuit drop" (signalling issue) at Dwarka, hindering the movement of trains approaching from Noida and Dwarka sides.

An official of the DMRC said that trouble started at 9.15 am. It was rectified around 12.10 pm, but it took time for normalcy to be restored as the snag had led to bunching of trains.

Again the train services on the same line were affected at 5.15 pm due to a technical snag that was rectified in an hour.

This is the second time that technical snag on line three affected rail services. On January 3, thousands of commuters were left stranded as services crawled for several hours on the corridor due to issues in overhead wiring between Pragati Maidan and Mandi House stations.

Spokesperson of the DMRC, Sandhya Sharma said train services on line three were affected today due to a signalling identification issue of trains. As a result, gradually all trains were given IDs afresh from the control centre, one after another manually which led to minor bunching of trains, resulting in delay.

She said due the signalling identification failure, control of the trains is lost by OCC. When signalling server trips, IDs of trains are re-issued to bring them back under OCC control.

The spokesperson said by the evening, the train identification was restored.