The Hindu : New Shatabdi trains in a phased manner

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jun 29, 2002

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National

New Shatabdi trains in a phased manner

CHENNAI June 28. Introduction of 11 new services, besides the extension of four trains and speeding up of 18 express trains, are the main features of Southern Railway's new time-table, released by the General Manager, V.Anand, here today.

Of these, four trains will become operational within this month, while the other trains, will be introduced before December in a phased manner.

All the three Shatabdi Expresses, announced by the Railway Minister, Nitish Kumar for the zone in the last railway budget will run as and when Jan Shatabdi rakes arrive from ICF, Perambur.

The Chennai Egmore - Trivandrum Express, will be the first new train, to be flagged off from Trivandrum, on June 30, which will take the Tiruchi, Madurai and Nagercoil route. The service will be available on all days except Sundays from Chennai Egmore and Mondays ex- Trivandrum.

The train, according to the General Manager, will become popular as its route is about 100 km less than the Erode and Ernakulam route and consequently, the fare will be less.

The Chennai Central - Visakapatnam (weekly) Express, the Bangalore - Gandhidham (weekly) Express and Hubli - Harihar Passenger are the other services to be pressed into service before this month.

The other new trains figure in the time -table are the Chennai Egmore - Vijayawada Jan-Shatabdi Express, the Kanniyakumari - Nizamuddin (weekly) Express, the Bangalore - Hubli Jan Shatabdi Express, the Yeswantpur-Durg (weekly) Express, the Yeswantpur - Cannanore (weekly) Express, the Ernakulam - Trivandrum Jan-Shatabdi Express, and the Ernakulam - Calicut Inter-city Express.

The Chennai Egmore - Madurai Pandiyan Express and the Chennai Central - Trivandrum Mail have been upgraded as super fast services with considerable reduction in their running time.

Apart from these two trains, the running time of 16 other express trains, including the Mangalore Mail, the West Coast Express, the Kanyakumari Express, the Rameswaram Express, the Kamban Express, the Tiruchi - Mangalore Express, and the Thanjavur - Mysore Express, is reduced ranging from 15 minutes to 55 minutes.

The General Manager said mainline EMU services would be introduced on the Erode- Coimbatore- Palghat section soon for the benefit of commuters.

Apart from these changes, coaches in major trains are being augmented to meet the growing passenger demand.

Arrival and departure timings of some trains are also changed for operational reasons.

The new time-table comes into effect from July 1.

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