New Delhi, October 07:
Railway Board today gave approval to zones for 39 additional special trains. These services will be introduced as special services from an early convenient date, said Ministry of Railways.
Most of the trains belong to the category of AC Express, Duronto, Rajdhani and Shatabdi. The date of operation of these additional trains is yet to be declared by the government.
Meanwhile, the Indian Railway Catering And Tourism Corporation Limited (IRCTC) a PSU of the Ministry of Railways today announced to restart the operation of Tejas Express trains for catering to the growing passenger demand due to the festive season.
The Lucknow-New Delhi and Ahmedabad-Mumbai Tejas Express trains were suspended from 19 March due to the coronavirus pandemic. Both the trains are expected to restart operations from 17 October.
IRCTC has conducted an extensive training programme to educate and train its team of employees of Tejas Trains to manage the operations of the trains and provide services according to the ‘new normal’ amidst Covid-19 pandemic. A Standard Operation Procedure observing Covid-19 protocol has been issued to ensure safety of the passengers.
Moreover, in order to meet the growing demand for trains, Indian Railways has also decided to restore the earlier system of preparation of second reservation charts from 10 October. The system was paused in the wake of novel coronavirus pandemic for the last few months.
In pre-Covid times, the second reservation charts were prepared between 30 minutes to 5 minutes before scheduled/rescheduled time of departure of trains. Cancellation of already booked tickets was also permitted during this period as per provisions of Refund Rules.
However, due to pandemic, instructions were issued to shift the time of preparation of second reservation chart to 2 hours before scheduled or rescheduled time of departure of trains.
Now, the Railway ministry decided that the second reservation chart shall be prepared at least 30 minutes before scheduled/rescheduled time of departure of train.
Accordingly, ticket booking facility, both online (via IRCTC website) and on PRS ticket counters, shall be available, before preparation of second chart.
The Railways had suspended all passenger trains services due to the imposition of a nationwide lockdown from 25th March. However, it resumed services in a staggered manner, with Shramik Special trains to help stranded migrant workers reach their home states from 1st May.
Later, it started 230 special trains across the country, followed by another 80 special trains from September 12.The additional trains were announced keeping in mind the COVID-19 situation, and also to allow reverse migration of workers to urban areas for work, with the country entering into Unlock 4.0
The national transporter also recently started operating clone trains under its network. Initially a total of 40 (20 pairs) of trains will operate in the Indian Railways network which has seen a huge passenger traffic demand.
The main feature of the clone trains will be that these trains will have fewer stoppages and will also run at a higher speed than the original train.
Clone trains comes as a boon for the railway passengers and the problem of not getting tickets in the busy routes may be reduced with the introduction of clone trains.
