While playing up to gallery about putting in place world class infrastructure at railway stations, Indian Railways on other hand seems to have forgotten woes of travellers, especially those choosing the special trains. Even as Railways charges extra fare from travellers, the facilities against the premium charge is worse than the general trains that are currently running. Trains starting with zero digit are telling tales of sorry plight of travellers as no one in the system is having any time to sort out their problem, leave alone even lending an ear to their woes. The basic problem with these trains is that they are running sans any planning on part of the authorities, it seems. The examples of train running on East to Southern India would suffice to drive home the message of sorry state of affairs. Or for that matter, even festival specials or summer specials that are introduced with much fanfare by Railways, the plight of travellers is often taken for granted.

 

Skewed Timings: As majority of these trains pass through Nagpur station, the locals here who often book tickets say, majority of these trains reach their destination nearly 24 to 36 hours behind schedule. Satish Yadav, associated with Railways, shared the ordeal faced by his close relative, who boarded from Bengaluru a special train for Patna on Monday, only to find himself in a piquant situation. The train was to reach Nagpur at 4.45 am but arrived here only in evening, nearly nine and half-an-hour late and would reach Patna, nearly 48 to 60 hours behind schedule, given the snail pace at which the train is moving, he feared. So even as travellers are charged extra premium, the Railways however is not bound to provide at par services. One does not want the sky, Yadav said, but atleast some measures to ensure that trains moving to Patna and Uttar Pradesh do not get excessively delayed.

 

Questioning the rationale of these special trains, which Railways proudly flash every year, highest number of them being run to clear the summer rush, Yadav, said, in most of the trains, even basic amenities are not available. Leave alone pantry, as per rule any trains running for 24 hours must have accompanying pantry, but even the toilets run out of water. And rubbing salt on wound, in name of train on demand (ToD) rule, Railways charge 15 to 20 per cent extra fare. No Time Table: Since these are not regular trains, there is no time tabled run planned for these trains, so on tracks that are already saturated, the special trains gets ‘special’ treatment from the Railways.

 

Operations control room of Railways already struggles to manage the load of regular trains, maintaining their punctuality and ensuring space for goods rakes, so there is no time left to worry about delayed run of special trains. Yadav, who was at the station on Tuesday, said, the situation was quite pathetic to say the least, as over half a dozen trains were lined-up from Ajni to Nagpur station waiting for berthing at platform no. 1. These included AP Express, two special trains, and the situation arose as the latter were running several hours behind schedule due to which the jumbling occurred on the tracks. Single TTE in entire Train: To make matters worse, another special measure on these special trains, is that railway depute only one TTE to man the entire train, which has nearly 22 coaches, minimum. So the lone ticket checker just cannot come up to expectations of travellers if they face any issue mid-way to their destination, claimed Yadav further. Shorter Runs Needed: Year after year, there is no change in these pathetic conditions of special trains as Railways is taking the travellers for granted. Brijbhushan Shukla, Member, DRUCC, SECR, suggested that Railways instead of wasting energy on such long distance trains, can plan to run short distance train and offer proper connectivity for such travellers. This way the travellers can schedule their travel plan and Railways can clear the rush much faster. A long-term thinking needs to be put in place to prevent recurrence of such situation, added Shukla now that in case the Middle East war prolongs, Railways’ responsibility would increase further as more travellers would turn to Railways in near future.