Central Railway’s suburban services were disrupted for a third consecutive day, this time by the death of cattle. Four buffaloes were crushed by a suburban local between Ambernath and Badlapur on Wednesday afternoon, hitting services severely on the Karjat-Kalyan section.

Shriniwas Mudgerikar, CR chief spokesperson, said the buffaloes were walking on the tracks at around 2.30 pm when they were hit by the train, got entangled in the wheels and were crushed. This held up the train and consequently bunched other trains behind it. As per the rules, railway authorities had to remove the pieces of the carcasses from under the wheels before they could release the train.

On Monday, train services had been severely affected after motormen refused to work overtime; on Tuesday, an overhead wire failure between Bhandup and Mulund had delayed trains on the suburban system. Before that, on Friday, a bridge collapse at Kopri in Thane had stopped trains for a few hours.