Daijiworld Media Network - Mangaluru (SP)

Mangaluru, Oct 10: After a gap of nearly two months, passenger trains will begin to move between the city and state's capital city, Bengaluru from Wednesday October 10 onward. This news has come as a major relief for the regular commuters, particularly the aged and sick people for whom bus travel becomes nightmarish. The trains on this sector had stopped operations since August 14.

The train services had been suspended due to heavy rain and landslides on the railway tracks in Saklelshpur-Subrahmanya ghat area. Over 65 landslips had been experienced between 55 km long line between Subrahmanya and Yedakumeri. As such, the officials had to repeatedly postpone dates of beginning train services as fresh incidents of landslides happened. During these slides, over two lac cubic metres of earth had got deposited on the railway tracks.

After the landslides made it impossible to run trains on this route, the Bengaluru train had begun to move via Kerala. But this took eight to ten hours more to reach Bengaluru and it also cast adverse affect on movement of trains in Kerala. Therefore, the train was stopped within a few days.

After trial run, goods trains were allowed to move on the tracks from October 1. Now passenger trains have been allowed to move.

The night express train between Bengaluru - Karwar/Kannur will start running from today. The day train to Bengaluru will begin to serve passengers from Thursday onward, said public relations officer of southwest railway. Because of shortage of rakes, the Karwar-Bengaluru train will leave Karwar on Saturday, while other trains will move as scheduled, it is gathered.