Railways reaches higher, sets world record

At the onset, it was viewed as a move essentially aimed at ensuring the smooth flow of a multi-crore loan from Japan for the western section of its ambitious Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC). It has instead made Indian Railways set an unexpected world record, one which it is now planning to get certified by the Guinness Book of World Records.

The Railway Ministry’s decision to conduct field trials to ascertain whether double-stack container trains can run under Over Head Equipment (OHE) has made it the only railway in the world to run a train under a 7.45-metre-high contact wire.

The successful trial has already made Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav announce a Rs 10-lakh award for the electrical directorate officials. The trial has also led the ministry to seriously consider the move to electrify the 1,483-km-long Western DFC, which in turn, will ensure faster and smoother processing of the Japanese loan.

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Rajdhanis, Shatabdis ‘popular’ trains, so fare cut is cut

Of the 830 pairs of trains being operated on the Railways network, 544 pairs have now been classified as “popular trains” by the Railways Ministry.

While it may not mean much to unsuspecting passengers, this move by Rail Bhavan has ensured that fare reductions on AC-I and AC-II tier classes of travel, as mentioned in this year’s Rail Budget, are available on just 286 pairs of Mail and Express trains and have been halved on 65 per cent of total trains running.

Ministry officials said that trains having an occupancy level of 60 per cent and above were classified as “popular”.

This latest revision of the list of popular trains has meant an addition of 111 pairs of trains to the category as compared to last year, effectively reducing the number of trains which will actually offer the reduced AC-I and AC-II fares in their totality.

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