Title - Kollam railway station finally gets a ‘real’ platform No 1

The railway authorities have renumbered the platforms at the Kollam railway station from Sunday, bringing relief to the passengers who board trains here. The station from now on will have platforms No 1 and No 2, like any other normal station.

Till Sunday, Kollam's main platform was called platform No 4 and the second platform, No 5. This unique numbering system had to be put in place because the station also had metre gauge trains coming in until recently. Till recently, a meter gauge train from Punalur used to arrive at the platform No 1 of the station. The situation has now changed with the metre gauge line towards the east being converted into a broad gauge one.

With the renumbering, the old platform No. 4 has become platform No 1 and platform No 5 has become platform No 2. The old platform No 1 will be known as platform No 1A for the time being.

The strange system of numbering often created confusion among the passengers who are new to the station. The announcement that a particular train would reach platform No 4 would usually misguide the passengers and prompt them to leave the real platform No 4. The confusion also paved way to accidents at the station. Two children were seriously injured when they tried to get out of a train which they boarded by mistake due to this confusion, a month ago.

According to an official at Kollam railway station, the decision to change the platform numbers was taken based on complaints from passengers and passenger associations. The rise in the number of accidents has also prompted the authorities to initiate corrective measures.