Aug. 1: The waiting halls were full and the platforms chock-a-block.

Guwahati railway station hardly had any room, as passengers jostled for space amid an uneasy calm after a few trains were cancelled and the timetables of others rescheduled.

Anxious about the departure time of 2423 Down Rajdhani Express, Biraj Deb, 33, waited for almost nine hours at the station before he could commence his journey to Delhi.

The wait was not easy. The temperature shot up to 37.1 degrees Celsius as the day progressed and to make matters worse, there was a power breakdown.

Though Deb reached the station early, there was no space for him in the air-conditioned waiting room so he had no choice but to loiter around platform number 1.

Deb, who hails from Cooch Behar, was in the city for some official engagement.

“I actually came here to attend two official meetings, first in the city and then at Jagiroad. So, I reached the station very early,” he said.

Like Deb, thousands of commuters were stranded at the railway station today as the Northeast Frontier Railway commenced the drive for a security check of the tracks by a pilot train. As the pilot train precedes the passenger train to check the safety of the tracks after a given interval, the NFR had to make alterations in the railway timetable by cancelling and short terminating some of the trains.

Senior station manager of Guwahati railway station Asheshwar Jha said two pilot trains were released from the station to Srirampur to escort the passenger trains.

“Since it is not feasible to release a pilot train before every passenger train, we used two pilot trains to check the tracks today. Three to four passenger trains left the station after the pilot trains like a convoy,” Jha said.

Because of this drive, the timetable of the trains was rescheduled.

Jha said seven trains, which were supposed to depart from Guwahati station today, were cancelled.

The chief public relations officer of NFR, S. Hajong, said, “After the derailment at Kokrajhar this morning and the train accident near Malda last night, a few trains had to be cancelled because of security reasons while the timetables of a few were rescheduled.”

Jha said both the Guwahati Railway Police (GRP) and the Railway Police Force (RPF) were on high alert.

Raj Kumar Jaiswal and Balwant Singh from Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, were also annoyed by the situation, as they were supposed to board the Dibrugarh-Howrah Kamrup Express at 7.35am.

“We travel by train regularly but have never had to face such a horrible situation. No arrangements were made for the passengers whose trains had got delayed. Over and above, there was no power. We were stranded and the heat made matters worse,” Jaiswal said.