ROURKELA: Local railway authorities were in for a surprise when a Gorakhpur-bound Shramik Special train from Mumbai chugged into Jharsuguda and Rourkela stations on Saturday morning. The SER had no clear explanation as to how it happened and it was not immediately clear if the train wrongly passed through Rourkela or it was a planned route diversion. It had no prior information about change of route of the train.

SER sources informed that after leaving Mumbai on May 21, the train changed course taking the Howrah-Mumbai route via Bilaspur and briefly halted at Jharsuguda and Rourkela stations for change of crew and taking water respectively. At about 8.30 am it left Rourkela for Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh via Bihar’s Hatia-Dhanbad-Mokama-Chhapra-Siwan.  

The usual route of the train should have been via Jalgoan-Bhusaval-Khandwa-Itarsi-Jabalpur-Manikpur-Mugalsarai. Chakardharpur-based Senior Divisional Commercial Manager of SER Manish Pathak said against usual running of about 12 trains via Rourkela, the SER is getting 20 diverted trains due to congestion on the routes of Central Railway and North Central Railway.