Pune's Railway Mega Block Will Cancel 42 Trains in 2026

Central Railway doesn't usually apologise before disrupting your trip; it just publishes a block notice and expects you to have read it. From 19 September to 4 October 2026, the Pune division is running a 15-day mega block between Hadapsar and Ghorpadi to commission a new third line — and in the process, cancelling 42 mail and express trains outright, diverting 25 more, and short-terminating or rescheduling a long tail of others. If you have a Pune-origin or Pune-passing train booked anywhere in that window, this is the part where checking your PNR two days before departure stops being optional. The infrastructure work is genuinely useful once it's done. Getting through the fortnight it takes to do it is the part nobody plans for.

ℹ️ The Short Version

Central Railway's Pune division is cancelling 42 trains and diverting 25 more between 19 September and 4 October 2026 for a mega block near Hadapsar. If you're travelling to or through Pune in that window, check your specific train on NTES before assuming it's running as booked.

A "mega block" is Indian Railways' term for a scheduled, multi-day suspension of normal traffic on a section of track so engineering work can happen without dodging live trains. This one runs between Hadapsar and the Ghorpadi Coach Maintenance Complex, and it's there to commission a new third line and remodel the station yards — work that, done piecemeal around regular services, would take considerably longer and be considerably more dangerous for the maintenance crews doing it.

The block runs daily from noon to 5pm on the Up and Down lines between Pune and Hadapsar through the fortnight, with the heaviest disruption clustering around 19–23 September and again as the block wraps up around 4 October. Forty-two mail, express, and passenger trains are cancelled outright across roughly 98 individual trips. Twenty-five more are diverted onto longer routes. A number of others are short-terminated or rescheduled, which is railway-speak for "ends somewhere that isn't where your ticket says."

Pune's rail traffic has grown faster than its track capacity for years, and the Hadapsar–Ghorpadi stretch has been a known chokepoint — trains queuing for platform access, coaches shuffled between maintenance slots with barely enough time between them. A third line through this section doesn't sound exciting, but it's the difference between years more of exactly this kind of disruption and a network that can actually absorb Pune's growth. Central Railway's choice to run one concentrated 15-day block instead of years of smaller weekend blocks is, if you squint, the less annoying option — it's just annoying all at once instead of annoying forever. Small comfort if you're stuck at Hadapsar right now, but useful context for anyone wondering why this keeps happening.

The cancellation list includes the Siddheshwar Express, Indrayani Express, Deccan Express, and the Pune–Solapur Intercity Superfast, along with Pune–Howrah, Pune–Jammu Tawi, Pune–Nagpur, Pune–Darbhanga, Pune–Ajni, and Pune–Ernakulam services on their scheduled dates. The Indore–Daund Express, Jodhpur–Hadapsar Express, Pune–Jaipur Express, and Pune–Jabalpur Express are affected too — some cancelled, some rerouted, depending on the specific date. This is not a full list, and it shouldn't be treated as one: check your exact train number against Central Railway's published notice or the NTES app, because the schedule varies day by day across the fortnight rather than applying uniformly.

💡 Try This First

Search your train number directly on NTES rather than relying on a news article's list — schedules for this block have already shifted once since the first notice went out, and they can shift again.

Diverted trains are rerouted through Lonavala–Karjat–Panvel–Kalyan–Igatpuri–Manmad, Pune–Satara–Miraj–Pandharpur–Kurduwadi–Solapur, or Daund–Ahilyanagar–Manmad–Igatpuri–Kalyan, depending on the original route. A diverted train usually still gets you there — just later, and sometimes without the intermediate stop you were counting on for a connection or a pickup. If someone's meeting you at a station along the normal route, confirm the train is actually stopping there this fortnight before you send them the platform number. If this changes your plans enough to rethink the rest of the trip, G8Trip's travel guide hub has broader India-planning resources beyond just this one route.

IRCTC typically processes a full refund automatically for trains that Central Railway cancels outright — you don't need to file a TDR (Ticket Deposit Receipt) for a cancellation the railway initiated, only for one you're cancelling yourself. If your train is diverted or short-terminated rather than cancelled, the refund path is murkier: you're technically still travelling, just on an altered route, so check the specific notice for that train rather than assuming a blanket refund applies.

For a short-terminated train, the practical move is deciding in advance whether the truncated journey still works for you, or whether you'd rather cancel and rebook something else entirely. Waiting until you're already at the station to make that call rarely goes well — Tatkal availability on same-day alternate trains during a mega block is exactly as bad as you'd expect.

Here's the heuristic worth keeping for the next one, because there's always a next one: if your journey touches the block zone within 48 hours of the dates on the notice, check NTES the morning you travel — not the week before, when the schedule may still shift. Mega blocks get revised right up to execution as engineering timelines move. Nine times out of ten your train runs fine, just slightly late or on a different platform. The tenth time is the one where you're standing at Pune station with a printed ticket for a train that quietly stopped existing three days ago. A five-minute app check the morning of travel is cheaper than that discovery.

Ask Vani about a Pune train and it'll help you replan around a cancellation — swap in a flight, shift your dates, or rebuild the itinerary around a different city pair entirely. What it won't do is predict which trains Central Railway decides to cancel next; mega block notices come from the railway, not from any travel platform, and they change closer to the date than most planning tools account for.

This is, honestly, the kind of disruption AI travel planning is still bad at reacting to in real time — the information exists, but it's scattered across a PDF notice, a few regional news sites, and the NTES app, none of which talk to each other. If you're planning a Pune leg for late September, start with Vani for the itinerary, then double-check the specific train against NTES yourself before you lock in a connection that depends on it. It's a small, unglamorous habit — check the train, not just the itinerary — but it's the one that actually prevents the standing-at-the-station moment.

The third line will be worth it eventually. For the next fifteen days, it's mostly worth a five-minute NTES check before you leave for the station.