Team News Riveting
Raipur, October 18
The Chhattisgarh-based South Eastern Central Railway (SECR) would be the only zone in the Indian Railways that would not run special train in the ensuing festival season.
The Indian Railways today notified additional 32 special services to ensure smooth and comfortable travel for the passengers during this festive season. In this ongoing festive season, for the convenience of rail travelers and to clear extra rush of passengers, Indian Railways is running 2561 trips of 211 special trains (in pairs) till Chhath Puja this year.
Special Trains have been planned to connect major destinations across the country on railway routes, like Darbhanga, Azamgarh, Saharsa, Bhagalpur, Muzaffarpur, Firozpur, Patna, Katihar and Amritsar etc. Indian Railways has notified additional 32 special services to ensure smooth and comfortable travel for the passengers during this festive season, while 179 special services were notified earlier.
Of the 17 zones, the Bilaspur-headquartered SECR and Metro Railway Kolkata would not be running any special train. The Metro Railway is least significant even the Puja season is over, but the SECR has a heavy traffic during Diwali that Railways probably ignored.
The Indian Railways had locked horns with the Chhattisgarh government over the passenger services. The state government had taken a serious note earlier over the cancellation of passengers trains even as ruling Congress party leaders had alleged that people’s interest were overlooked for freight volume.
The Zone-wise details of festival special:
| S.NO. | Rly. | NO. OF SPL. (in pair) | NO. OF TOTAL TRIPS |
| 1 | CR | 10 | 132 |
| 2 | ECR | 10 | 176 |
| 3 | ECOR | 6 | 94 |
| 4 | ER | 14 | 108 |
| 5 | NR | 44 | 367 |
| 6 | NCR | 9 | 227 |
| 7 | NER | 3 | 44 |
| 8 | NFR | 4 | 64 |
| 9 | NWR | 7 | 257 |
| 10 | SR | 11 | 56 |
| 11 | SER | 4 | 22 |
| 12 | SCR | 35 | 271 |
| 13 | SWR | 23 | 386 |
| 14 | WCR | 7 | 26 |
| 15 | WR | 24 | 331 |
| G.TOTAL | 211 | 2561 |
