Tamil Nadu - Chennai   

18 more trains to have 24 coaches

CHENNAI: Southern Railway is hoping to increase the number of coaches to 24 in 18 more trains during this fiscal.

For this, it has placed an indent for additional coaches with the Railway Board. Now 11 trains are running with 24 coaches. In the past three years, the passenger traffic in Southern Railway has grown by 10-11 per cent. To meet the demand, Southern Railway has been adding more coaches to trains.

Neenu Ittyerah, Chief Public Relations Officer, said that during 2005-06, Southern Railway added 47 coaches to trains, and the number went up to 77 coaches added to 24 pairs of trains during 2006-07. During 2007-08, 176 coaches were added to 45 pairs of trains.

While in the long term, the Railways wants to increase the length of high-occupancy mail/express trains to 24 coaches and the high-occupancy passenger trains to 15 coaches, as a short- and medium-term measure, it wants to induct coaches with more berths. Against 72 berths available in a regular sleeper-class coach, a high-capacity sleeper-class coach boasts of 81 berths. Against 64 berths in an AC 3-tier coach, the high-capacity coach can have 72 berths. Both the AC 2-tier and first AC high-capacity coaches can accommodate 2 and 4 more berths respectively. Southern Railway already has 7 trains to which high-capacity coaches have been inducted. The zone has projected the requirement of coaches consequent to the completion of gauge conversion in certain sections and the new trains announced in the budget. Over and above the permanent augmentation, Southern Railway has added 2,598 coaches, based on the daily demands in various trains. Compared to the first quarter of 2007-08, this is 80 coaches more.

The punctuality of mail/express trains running in Southern Railway has improved. As against 95 per cent punctuality in June 2007, Southern Railway achieved 97.3 per cent in June this year, the Public Relations Officer said. This went up further in July.

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