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  Indian Railways News  / Additional coaches

The South Western Railway has temporarily augmented the Mysore-Dharwad Express rake by an additional second class sleeper coach. A release said train number 17301 Mysore-Dharwad Express will have 16 coaches with effect from Monday and this will be in service till August 30. Similarly, Train Number 17303 Mysore-Yeswhantpur Express rake will be augmented with an additional second class sleeper coach which will be in service till August 28.

  Indian Railways News  / Alight at Tirusulam for Chennai airport

CHENNAI: Train passengers bound for Chennai airport from the south of Tamil Nadu may soon be able to alight at the railway station diagonally opposite the aerodrome.Minister of State for Railways K H Muniyappa has ordered authorities to augment for a stop at Tirusulam Railway Station for express and mail trains, allowing passengers to proceed directly to the city airport. He was addressing the gathering on the occasion of Anti-Terrorism Day at the Rajiv Gandhi Memorial in Sriperumpudur in neighbouring Kanchipuram district on Monday.The Minister’s stress on a stop at Tirusulam is expected to end the hardship of passengers and visitors from southern districts who are forced to break their journey at the crowded Tambaram station to head for the airport.Outbound travellers to different countries from central and southern parts of the State prefer to commute  by train to Chennai, thanks to the convenience and the reasonable fare. Air passengers travelling by long distance trains alight atTambaram and avail other means of transport to the airport, which is about eight kilometres from the Gateway of Chennai (Tambaram).During this transition passengers must wait in serpentine queues at the suburban counters in Tambaram railway station to purchase tickets for electric multiple unit (EMU) trains. For those who want to avoid the difficult queues and opt for a bus, access to Metropolitan Transport Corporation fleets is almost a nightmare given the distance between the railway station and the bus terminus, and the heavy baggage. The other options are to shell out a few hundreds for a call taxi or get fleeced by autorickshaws.

In such a scenario, a stop at Tirusulam will help

passengers of about 20 daily express and mail trains bound for Chennai Egmore and almost five long

distance weekly trains bound for north and east India through Egmore. “Facilities like rest rooms will be built at Tirusulam,” S Anantharaman, Divisional Railway Manager, Chennai Division, Southern Railway said.

  Indian Railways News  / Government drops garbage plan for railway platform at Kochuveli - The Times of India

The government has decided to temporarily drop its plan to use garbage as filler for building railway platforms at Kochuveli. In a meeting of residents association, political leaders and corporation officials convened by urban affairs minister Manjalamkuzhy Ali here on Tuesday, the government met with stiff opposition from the locals of Kochuveli regarding the government's decision.

The members of residents' association pointed out that they cannot let their living place turn into another Vilappilsala and that the government should withdraw its move. Despite the best efforts of the minister to convince them, the people did not relent.

Eventually minister told the meeting that the government will not go ahead. However, it is learnt that the government will not completely back away from the proposed tie-up with railways to use the garbage in a constructive manner.

"The railways has listed about 27 places where garbage can be used as a filler material in the construction of railway platforms. This is not a scheme where we mean to dump huge quantities of waste in one place. It is a highly scientific way of using garbage and the government is hopeful that people could be convinced about the positives of such a project. There is no way the government would completely shelve this project," said a source.

The idea was to transport 400 tonnes of waste to Kochuveli which could be used along with the earth in increasing the length of platforms. The government had earlier tried to convert the rock quarry at Vellar into a waste processing plant. However, due to intense protest from the locals, government was forced to abandon the idea.

  Indian Railways News  / Steps to keep jumbos off tracks

Steps have been initiated jointly by the Southern Railway and the Forest Departments of Tamil Nadu and Kerala to prevent the incidents of wild elephants being run over by trains in the Walayar forests. It has been decided to block the movement of elephants near the ‘B' railway line by erecting stone walls and digging trenches.

  Indian Railways News  / Does the Andhra Train Accident Confirm Trivedi's Fears? - NYTimes.com

“Everybody was telling me that if you don’t increase the fares you are going to turn the railway coaches into coffins,” Dinesh Trivedi, former railways minister, told India Ink in March, shortly after he was fired for proposing higher passenger fares in an effort to modernize and increase the safety of Indian railways.

Exactly two months later, have his fears been realized? Sleeping passengers were rattled awake in the early hours of Tuesday when their train bound for Bangalore in southern India slammed into the back of a stationary freight train, crumpling the front coaches and killing at least 25 people.

The passenger train, 16591 Hubli Bangalore Hampi Express, rammed the freight train at 3:25 a.m. at Penukonda, in the Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh, about 400 kilometers, or 250 miles, south of Hyderabad. The accident also injured 55, 10 critically.

Television footage from the site of the crash showed rescue workers pulling survivors from mangled rail cars.

Railway officials say that the accident appears to have occurred because the passenger train ran through the red stop signal but that further investigation is under way.

The first and the third of twenty coaches were derailed, with the first car, which was mostly filled with luggage, catching fire. Most of the injured passengers were from an unreserved compartment, which typically carries poor migrant workers.

Anil Saxena, a Railways Ministry spokesman, said that the injured were taken to local hospitals and that those who were unharmed were put on other trains and buses to proceed to their destination. He added that rescue operations concluded at 8 a.m. on Tuesday, although cranes continued to remove debris off the tracks through the afternoon.

Mr. Saxena said that the driver of the passenger train survived the crash.

India’s extensive railway network is a transportation lifeline, carrying seven billion passengers a year, often at very low fares. The railway system, which covers some 65,000 kilometers, or 40,000 miles, operates almost 10,000 trains a day and is the country’s largest employer, with more than a million employees.

But the railways are also notorious for its deadly accidents, which routinely occur. In July 2011, more than 100 people were injured and dozens killed when a train derailed in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. In 2010, at least 150 people died after a train accident in West Bengal.

Yet the railways remain largely decrepit and unsafe, with some parts of the system 150 years old. Many analysts say this is because the railways remain a populist issue with politicians, who refuse to increase fares despite the need for investment in repairing tracks and adding safety features.

For the last nine years, for instance, no minister has dared to increase passenger ticket prices. When Mr. Trivedi attempted to do so earlier this year, his proposal was immediately shot down by Mamata Banerjee, the West Bengal chief minister, a former railway minister herself and a heavyweight in the federal government’s ruling coalition. Shortly afterward, she dismissed Mr. Trivedi.

The current railway minister, Mukul Roy, who was on his way to the site of Tuesday’s accident, announced a compensation of 500,000 rupees (about $9,100) to the relatives of those killed by the crash. Those with serious injuries would get about 100,000 rupees ($1,800) and those with “ordinary” injuries would get 50,000 rupees ($900), Mr. Saxena, the railway spokesman, said.