Ranchi–Varanasi Vande Bharat Delayed After Pantograph Snags OHE at PDDU

The Ranchi–Varanasi Vande Bharat spent the better part of Sunday afternoon stuck at Pt. Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Junction after its pantograph snagged the overhead equipment and broke.

Railway staff on the spot said the up train was easing toward platform 3 around 1.09 pm when, between poles numbered 673/97 and 673/109, the pantograph caught in the OHE wire. The gear snapped. Controllers halted the rake and had it hauled onto the platform so Traction Distribution crews could work safely.

RPF Inspector Anita Kumari reached with a security detail while TRS, TRD and Carriage & Wagon teams took over the technical side. Additional Divisional Railway Manager Kuldeep and Station Superintendent S.K. Singh also arrived as passengers waited out the delay. Staff brought the damaged pantograph down, lashed it clear of the wire and completed checks before clearing the train.

The Vande Bharat finally left toward Varanasi at about 2.38 pm — roughly an hour and a half after the snag. No passenger injury was reported. The same incident damaged the OHE span; once the train was clear, crews repaired the wire before platform 3 returned to normal working.

For a premium day train, ninety minutes at PDDU is a hard interruption. The junction is the last major stop before the Banaras–Cantt cluster, and any OHE fault there ripples into paths for other services using the same roads. Controllers will now pull event recorder data and examine whether the fault sat in the pantograph assembly, the contact wire geometry, or both.

Railways treat pantograph–OHE entanglements as equipment failures first, not as passenger-safety crises when nobody is hurt. Still, the sight of a sealed modern rake sitting dead under a broken pan tends to fray tempers on board. Staff presence on the platform was meant as much to keep order as to finish the repair.

As of Monday morning the public account stops at the timeline, the officials named above and the no-injury line. A formal cause finding will come only after the divisional enquiry note. Until then, the usable story for Banaras-bound travellers is operational: Sunday’s Vande Bharat lost time at PDDU because the pantograph and the overhead wire did not part cleanly, and TRD restored the road after securing the damaged gear.

PDDU, still widely called Mughalsarai in passenger talk, is a critical eastern gateway into the Varanasi terminal cluster. When a Vande Bharat occupies a platform under repair, pathing for freights and other mail trains on adjoining lines also tightens for that hour.

Travellers who messaged relatives from the stranded coaches described irritation more than panic, according to staff accounts of the scene. Announcements and the visible presence of RPF helped keep the aisle calm while TRD finished the lashing.

Divisional officers are expected to pull the loco and coach event logs before writing the cause note. Until that paper moves, the public facts stay limited to time stamps, the broken pantograph, the OHE repair and the clean injury record.