press trust of india
New Delhi, Oct 20: The Indian Railways will soon cut short the running time of over 500 long-distance trains by up to two hours, a senior railway official said Friday. The new timings will be updated in the November timetable of the railways, he said.
The national carrier has introduced “innovative timetabling” in accordance with the directions of Railway Minister Piyush Goyal, under which running time of popular trains is to be reduced by 15 minutes to two hours. The new timetable will also provide each railway division two to four hours for maintenance work.
“Our plan is to maximise the use of the existing rolling stock. . . If we have a train that is waiting somewhere to return, we can use it during the lie over period. In the new timetable around 50 such trains which will be run like this,” he said and added: “Fifty-one trains will immediately see reduced runtime from one to three hours. This will go up to more than 500 trains.”
According to the official, the railways have also initiated an internal audit to assess the possibility of upgrading 50 mail and express trains to superfast services. “This is part of an overhaul of the rail system to increase the average speed of existing trains,” he said.
Under the revised timings, trains such as the Bhopal-Jodhpur Express will reach 95 minutes early, while the Guwahati-Indore Special will complete its 2,330-km journey 115 minutes ahead of its current time and the 1,929-km journey of the Ghazipur-Bandra Terminus Express will be completed 95 minutes ahead of its current schedule.
Railways have also reduced the time that trains halt at stations and will also not stop at stations where footfall is limited. Coupled with track and infrastructure upgrade, automatic signalling and the new Linke-Hofmann-Busch coaches that allow a 130 kmph top speed, trains are expected to run faster.
The railways are also in the process of reviewing permanent speed restrictions.
