Mumbai: All 582 passengers stuck in the stranded monorail in Mumbai were rescued by 10 pm on Tuesday.
The monorail train, which operates on an elevated track, was stranded for over three hours near Mysore Colony after it lost power supply amid heavy rain.
Rescuers first tried to tow the four-coach monorail, which got stranded on a curve, to the nearest station with the help of another monorail, but the brakes remained jammed, Hindustan Times reported.
Fire Brigade personnel, who reached out to the elevated coaches via mechanised cranes, then had to break the windowpanes to bring out the passengers, deputy chief fire officer Anil Parab told HT.
With the air-conditioning not working for so long in the jam-packed coaches, some passengers fell ill and were taken to a hospital for medical attention.
According to Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), there was a second incident of monorail getting stuck.
The train, carrying around 200 passengers, stopped abruptly between Acharya Atre and Wadala Mono Rail station.
Thankfully, in this case, the authorities managed to tow back the train to Wadala station, and all passengers were brought out comfortably.
In the Mysore Colony monorail mishap, overcrowding caused a technical snag, resulting in a break in mechanical contact, said Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA).
“Preliminary checks revealed that due to overcrowding, the total weight of the train rose to around 109 metric tonnes, which exceeded its designed capacity of 104 metric tonnes. This excess weight caused a break in the mechanical contact between the power rail and the current collector, cutting off the electricity supply required to run the train,” a spokesperson explained.
