New RRI in place at Itarsi station, but no smooth passage

BHOPAL: Despite commissioning of new route relay interlocking (RRI) system at Itarsi station, a few trains will remain cancelled for next 2-3 days. This is due to rake imbalance on account of sudden cancellation of trains for past one month. New RRI was commissioned on July 22.
Train movement via Itarsi was disrupted for last 34 days with cancellation of 2,404 trains, short termination of 17 trains and diversion of 249 trains.However, despite normalcy, a few trains will still remain cancelled for next couple of days from originating stations as rakes are not available. Railway traffic will be normal from July 26.
Still, 11 trains remain cancelled on July 23, including 12409 Gondwana Express, 14319 Indore Bareily Express, 14009 Patalkot Express, 12688 Dehradun-Madurai Express.
Similarly, railways has issued that 12406 Gondwana Express, 12522 Raptisagar Express and 15647 LTT-Guwahati were cancelled from their source stations on July 24, 11072 Kamayani Express, 14314 Bareily-LTT Express would remain cancelled on July 25 and several passengers trains till July 26.
Itarsi is a critical four directional junction station/yard in Bhopal division of West Central Railway. Being situated strategically in central part of India, Itarsi links north-south and east-west parts of India. It is a critical junction on Mumbai-Bhopal, Bhopal-Nagpur and Bombay-Jabalpur-Allahabad route.
On June 17, a major fire damaged RRI panel system at Itarsi station by which all signals and points/crossings used for changing of routes at junction station are operated centrally from a cabin through electrical devices. As a result, complete automatic train operations were disrupted leading to severe detention to trains passing across Itarsi.
As per normal schedule, officials said 145 scheduled mail/express trains and 50-60 freight trains are dealt with at Itarsi station in both up and down directions.
Mammoth installation of this new RRI system consists of 700 km of underground cables, 108 points, 78 signals, 144 detection points of digital axle counters forming 89 track sections, 32 track circuits, 9,000 relays, 60,000 jumpers of length more than 200km and more that 2 lakh wire connections.