Meanwhile, Kolkata and Howrah: Up and down 62 local trains and 82 mail and express are completely closed today, Thursday. Manish Jain, Divisional Railway Manager of Eastern Railway’s Howrah Division announced this in a press conference on Wednesday afternoon. Eastern Railway has decided on such a mega block on the Howrah-Burdwan route to demolish the bridge number 213 in Burdwan. The railway overbridge was built in 1901 near Burdwan station. Eastern Railway decided to demolish the old bridge and build a new bridge keeping in mind the passenger service. In this regard, Howrah DRM Manish Jain said on Wednesday, ‘A lot of space will be available after the bridge is demolished. New track pages are possible at that location. It is also possible to increase the length of the platform to make something new for passenger convenience. So it is very necessary to demolish that bridge for infrastructure improvement.’ The work of breaking the bridge has started from January 26. Manish said that it will take time till February 21 to complete the entire work.
Eastern Railway informs that around 150 trains are canceled on the Howrah-Burdwan route (on February 9) due to the breaking of that bridge. The canceled trains include 17 pairs of EMU local up and down on Howrah-Burdwan main line, 14 pairs of EMU local up and down on Howrah-Burdwan cord line, one pair of MEMU on Howrah-Burdwan route, one pair of MEMU on Sealdah-Goda route. In addition, there are 41 pairs of mail-express up and down. However, premium trains like Bande Bharat or Rajdhani Express will not be cancelled.
However, not only the train is cancelled, it has been decided to run 42 special trains today on the main and cord lines to provide some convenience to the passengers. Among them, there are 22 EMU specials in the section from Howrah to Shaktigarh on the main line and 20 EMU specials on the cord line between Howrah and Mashagram.
