The Hindu : Front Page : New railway time table released

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jun 29, 2007
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New railway time table released

Sujay Mehdudia

NEW DELHI: Indian Railways on Thursday released its new time table for the season starting on July 1. The time table has a whole lot of new user-friendly features, including colour coding of trains, to depict their category and options such as route map and station index.

One of the major highlights of the new time table is the increase in the speed of 178 mail express trains and 93 passenger trains. It provides details of 45 pairs of new trains, extension of 24 and increase in frequency of 15 services. Commercial information of passenger use and interest, viz. advance reservation period, reservation through internet, refund rules, rail travel and catering services, are the other important features.

“Trains at a Glance” was released by V.N. Mathur, Member (Traffic), Railway Board, at the Rail Bhavan here.

Mr. Mathur said the “user-friendly features” included sections on how to read the table, route map, station index, trains between important stations, station code index, train number index and train name index. Other prominent features were colour coding scheme depicting the Rajdhani Express, the Shatabdi Express, the Jan-Shatabdi Express and the Garib Rath Express in pink; super-fast trains in yellow; and mail/express services in green or white. The about-200 page time table also had a special supplement on ‘wildlife’ covering important wildlife sanctuaries, national parks and zoological parks in various States. It also had information on vigilance organisation, public grievance machinery and catering services.

Speed increased

Giving details of trains whose running time would be reduced under the new regime, Mr. Mathur said the Patna-Ernakulum Express would be speeded up by 255 minutes, the maximum for an express train.

The Ambikapur-Durg passenger train would be speeded up by 315 minutes, the maximum for any passenger train.

A total of 131 mail/express trains would be speeded up by 30 minutes, 29 trains by 30-59 minutes, and 13 by one-two hours and five trains by more than two hours.

As many as 78 passenger trains would be speeded up by less than 30 minutes, six each by 30-59 and one-two hours respectively and three trains by more than two hours.

The time table also had details of eight ‘Garib Raths’ to be introduced this year. Recalling the 2007 Railway Budget announcement by Railway Minister Lalu Prasad, Mr. Mathur said the Railways proposed to augment popular trains by including about 800 coaches.

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