Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

Plea to increase coaches, extend platforms

Special Correspondent

Coimbatore: The Citizens' Voice Club here has urged the Railways to allot adequate funds to extend the platforms in a number of stations so that more coaches could be added to the trains to meet the summer rush.

Heavy rush

In a memorandum to the Railway Minister, Lalu Prasad, the secretary of the club, C.M. Jeyaraam, has suggested increasing the number of coaches to 24\25 from the present 16\17 to clear the heavy rush. By doing so, at least 20 per cent more would be able to travel with confirmed tickets. For this, even the hauling capacity of the engines could be increased or in case of diesel engines, double engine system could be tried.

But, `longer trains' (with 24 coaches) cannot be accommodated in the current platforms due to various signalling equipment and other constraints. Even at present, a considerable portion of the train is `out of the platform' causing much inconvenience to the passengers.

Hence, the Railways would have to spend substantially for adding more coaches, higher capacity engines, `coupled engines', and track and signalling equipment at all stations where the trains are scheduled to stop.

However, the extension of platform depends on the existing yard layout. At certain stations, it is enough if the platforms were extended one side or both the sides.

At some others, the entire layout of the yard would have to be modified and signalling and other arrangements would have to be shifted.

Study must

According to him, stations such as Podanur, Coimbatore, Coimbatore North, Tirupur, Erode, Salem, Jolarpet, Katpadi and Arakonam should be studied initially to see whether they could accommodate 24\25 coaches in all their platforms.

Later, extension work could be extended to other stations.

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