New ‘AP Express’ triggers confusion before flag-off

As news of East Coast Railway’s (ECoR) new tri-weekly New Delhi-Visakhapatnam-New Delhi AC AP Express with the number 22415/22416 to make its inaugural run from the port city came in, confusion prevailed in sections of people.

At 9 a.m. on Wednesday, this train is to be inaugurated from Visakhapatnam through video link by the Minister for Railways Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu sitting in New Delhi. People were puzzled because the existing daily AP Express, also to the national capital, being run by the South Central Railway has a similar nomenclature.

Shortly after the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh and the creation of Telangana, there was a strong demand for the existing AP Express to be named as Telangana Express because it was leaving what was very clearly the capital of the new State, joint capital though it may be, for the next 10 years.

Acceding to the pressure, the Indian Railways announced that from November 15 this year, it would run as Telangana Express only.

The doubt now is the close resemblance to the names of the two superfast express trains from Hyderabad and New Delhi. Enquiries revealed that the SCR did not have anything to do with it and neither was it kept in the communications loop because the new train was run by the ECoR. Also, sources said there was a difference because while the existing AP Express was a daily service, the new AC AP Express was a tri-weekly service only.

However, a senior official said considering the 90-day advance reservation facility offered across India, the SCR had ‘fired’ up the new nomenclature of the existing AP Express as Telangana Express in the passenger reservation system, from November 15. “Anyone making an advance reservation during the 90-day period will get a ticket that will have the new name,” he said, on condition of anonymity, while maintaining that there was no need for anybody to harbour any confusion. Interestingly, till late on Tuesday evening, even the SCR was yet to receive an official notification of the new tri-weekly train’s running.

“We only know that on its inaugural run, it will leave Visakhapatnam at 9 a.m. on Wednesday. We will get the schedule of its regular operation later But as of now we don’t even know when it reaches New Delhi,” the official added.

Tri-weekly Delhi-Vizag train has similar nomenclature to existing one from Hyderabad