The platform extension work at Sealdah station continued to disrupt the suburban train schedule and torment tens of thousands of passengers on Saturday.

Passengers onboard the Sealdah-bound Rajdhani Express had to wait for close to three hours near Dum Dum station before the train would move and reach Sealdah. A similar fate was in store for passengers of the Sealdah-bound Duronto Express when the express train came to a halt ahead of Dum Dum station on its way to Sealdah.

Many trains on the Sealdah north and main sections have been cancelled for the infrastructure upgrade work, which involves extending platforms 1 to 5 to accommodate 12-coach trains, instead of nine-coach ones. The last leg of the work started on Friday and is supposed to end on Sunday.

Despite it being Saturday, platforms at several stations — like Barrackpore, Dum Dum, Barasat, Dum Dum Cantonment and Ultadanga — were brimming with passengers in the rush hours. People tried, often in vain, to board overcrowded trains.

A similar rush had on Friday morning led to the death of a 21-year-old passenger who fell from an overcrowded train compartment.

On Saturday, many passengers on Sealdah-bound trains that remained stranded for hours because of the disruption got off near the Narkeldanga maintenance yard and started walking on the tracks in the morning.

The Duronto Express was scheduled to reach Sealdah at 1.15pm on Saturday. It chugged into a spot close to Dum Dum station around 2pm and remained stationary for a little over four hours. Several passengers including those with women and children decided to get off the train, walk down the railway tracks to reach Dum Dum station.

The Delhi-Sealdah Rajdhani Express was scheduled to reach Sealdah 10.15am. A section of passengers said the train reached close to Dum Dum around 10.15am. For almost the next three hours, it didn’t move. It finally reached Sealdah around 1.20pm, when several passengers had deboarded with their luggage and walked on the tracks to reach the nearest railway station at Dum Dum.

Passengers onboard suburban trains along the Sealdah main line that extended up to Krishnanagar and beyond, via Barrackpore and Sealdah north up to Bongaon, faced similar torment reaching Sealdah station from Dum Dum, where several trains with truncated routes were terminated.

“A five-minute ride from Bidhannagar to Sealdah took around 35 minutes because of a queue of trains in front,” said Satyajit Roy, a Sodepur resident. “We saw railway workers using hand-held red and green flags to navigate suburban trains. It must have been the same for long distance trains as well.”

Platforms 1 to 5 at Sealdah handle over 100 trains every day. They travel between Sealdah and places like Bongaon, Barasat (in North 24-Parganas) and Lalgola (Murshidabad). The daily passenger count is over 2 lakh.

Many trains on the Sealdah north and main suburban lines are ending their trips at Dum Dum and Dum Cantonment instead of Sealdah.

Around 4.30pm, the platforms of Bidannagar Road station were overcrowded. A family of five, tired of waiting for over 40 minutes on a Sealdah-bound train, got off.

The group came from Kanchrapara. “The train stopped for long intervals after reaching Dum Dum. But the wait at Ultadanga was much longer. We are headed to a family programme at Sealdah,” said one of them.

They finally took an auto to Khanna and then a bus to Sealdah.

Autos and taxis fleeced passengers in the crisis. Some taxis charged between ₹800 and ₹1,000 for a 4km trip between Bidhannagar and Sealdah, alleged passengers.

The Metro Railway ran nine pairs of extra trains between Dum Dum and Dakshineswar on Saturday to aid affected suburban train commuters.