Karnataka   

Mangalore-Yeshwanthpur new train flagged off

MANGALORE: A 12-year wait for the people of this region ended at 3 p.m. on Saturday as Railway Minister Lalu Prasad flagged off the new Mangalore-Yeshwanthpur train.

Commuters by the special train that was flagged off to mark the occasion as well as the crowd numbering more than 1,000 people cheered and clapped as the train began to move.

The train’s movement could be seen on the giant screen specially erected close to the dias in a huge pandal, where Mr. Prasad pressed a button to turn the signal from red to green. People were excited even to see the amber light grow and they were all smiles as it turned to green and the train started its 508-km journey towards Bangalore.The metre gauge line was suspended for conversion in September, 1995, and people agitated several times for the early completion of the project. The Railway Minister said, in a lighter vein, that he had come to realise that the bus lobby and the truck lobby were opposed to the railway line besides the engineering difficulties railwaymen encountered in the gauge conversion work in the steep ghat sections.

“What you have got is not an ordinary line,” he said hinting at the hurdles it had to cross.

He announced a reward of Rs. 10 lakh to the railway engineers, who built the broad gauge track through a tough terrain. Agreeing that several parts of the country were still uncovered by the Railways, he said he would not be a miser in agreeing to the demands of different regions saying that more facilities would only enhance railway earnings.

Describing the Railways turn around and profit of Rs. 20,000 crore as “jaadu”, he said a lot more was about to happen.

He promised a dedicated double-line freight movement corridor from Howrah to Mumbai to Chennai and back to Howrah to decongest the saturated main lines.

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