RailEnquiry

The introduction of flagship trains like the Duronto services to Madurai and Thiruvananthapuram, and a fair share of new long-haul trains provide a silver lining in Southern Railway’s operations in the April-December period which saw far fewer new trains than the net additions in 2011-12.According to official figures, during the April-December period, 18 pairs of new trains were introduced, 11 pairs of trains have been extended and frequency of two pairs of express trains was increased. Apart from the Duronto trains, the new trains that offered relief to passengers included and the Chennai-Asansol, Chennai-Puri, Chennai-Shalimar, Bikaner-Coimbatore and the Villupuram – Purulia – Villupuram express trains.However, the number of additional services pale in comparison to the relative bonanza of 2011-12 when over 30 new trains across superfast, express, passenger and MEMU class categories were introduced. Some of the important new trains added then included the Dibrugarh-Kanyakumari Vivek express, the New Delhi-Puducherry superfast express, Purulia-Villupuram superfast, the Tuticorin-Dwaraka Vivek express, Bilaspur-Ernakulam and the Santragachi-Mangalore Vivek express services.“However, the significant thing this year is that almost all the services announced in the Railway Budget are already running in the network,” an official said.The train on the waitlist is a prominent one though — the Chennai-Bangalore AC Double Decker train, which is likely to be introduced in a few weeks.And of the four trains whose frequency was increased, two trains that await the upgrade from bi-weekly to weekly status are the Nizamuddin Kanyakumari Express and the Kharagpur-Villupuram Expresses.During April-December 2012, the Southern Railway also increased the frequency of two pairs of express trains---Tirupati-Rameswaram-Tirupati Express that was raised from bi-weekly to tri-weekly, and Mangalore–Chennai Central–Mangalore Express that was elevated to a daily train from a six-days a week schedule,During 2011-12 the frequency of five pairs of trains — including the upgrading of the Chennai Egmore-Tiruchendur Express, from weekly to daily, and the Mumbai-Mangalore tri-weekly to a daily train — was increased.Southern Railway has also added eight new passenger trains including important services such as the Mannargudi-Tiruchi, Dindigul-Palani and the Kollam-Nagercoil services. Besides, five express trains, six passenger trains were extended during the April-December period last year.

The important changes included extending the Mangalore–Palakkad–Mangalore Daily Inter City Expresses to Coimbatore, the Mangalore–Thiruvananthapuram Expresses to Nagercoil, the Dadar -Yesvantpur -Dadar Chalukya Expresses to Puducherry thrice a week and the Tirupati-Madurai-Tirupati Bi-weekly Expresses to Rameswaram.

Some of the important passenger trains extended during this period were the Bangalore-Salem-Bangalore Passengers (to Nagore), the Velankanni-Nagore-Velankanni and the Thanjavur-Nagore-Thanjavur Passengers (to Karaikal) and Coimbatore-Erode-Coimbatore MEMUs (to Salem).

Southern Railway also operated 1,183 special trains on various sectors during April – December, permanently augmented 90 coaches and temporarily augmented 5,535 coaches.