punjab

Updated: Jul 01, 2017 09:37 IST

You’ve most likely heard of trains being late. You may also have heard of people reaching late for their train. Here’s something rather rare. On its first regular run on Friday, the Humsafar Express (Jammu Tawi-Tirupati) was running faster by an hour and more against it scheduled time, which meant that 23 people in Jalandhar missed it. In fact, the train reached Ludhiana, around 60 km ahead, even before its scheduled timing for Jalandhar!

The luxury Express reached Jalandhar Cantt station at 8.40 am, an hour ahead of schedule, and left after a five-minute halt. It was scheduled to reach Ludhiana at 10.55am but, it gathered even more time, and reached at 9.28am after a 43-minute dash. This was 87 minutes — nearly an hour and a half — ahead of schedule.

Meanwhile, 23 people were left stranded in Jalandhar as the train had come and gone. It was then kept waiting for these passengers at Ludhiana, who were brought there in another train (Paschim Express) on the route, said divisional traffic manager SP Bhatia. The train departed from Ludhiana at its schedule time (11am).

Railway officials who did not want to be named said that the timetable was not updated in the system since it was the first run. Another senior official said the mismanagement was “properly dealt with”. “We took care that passengers should not face any inconvenience. The timetable was updated later,” he said.

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Meanwhile, when Humsafar Express halted at platform 1 at Ludhiana ahead of its schedule, other trains (Amrapali Express and Amritsar-New Delhi Inter-City) that were to arrive at the platform were halted at another one.