Southern Railway will resume the services of five pairs of special trains due to increased passenger patronage for rail services, following the relaxations of COVID-19 lockdown norms.
Earlier, the officials had cancelled these services till June 30.
Among the trains are those running within Tamil Nadu and two of them connecting Tamil Nadu with Kerala.
“We had to cancel these services due to lack of last mile transport connectivity for the passengers due to stringent lockdown rules,” said a senior railway official.
Though train services were available, passengers from far-off places like Sholavandan, Melur and Usilampatti could not find transport services to reach the nearest railway station due to lockdown.
Now that autorickshaw and taxi services are available without major restrictions, more people have started to travel in the available train services.
“The patronage of trains that are already running has increased up to 90% which is an indication that more people are willing to travel. As of now, we are resuming services of five pairs of trains,” the official said.
From Sunday
The following train services will resume from Sunday.
Train No. 06101 Chennai Egmore - Kollam special train, Train No. 06851 Chennai Egmore - Rameswaram special train, Train No. 02668 Coimbatore - Nagercoil special train, Train No. 06343 Trivandrum - Madurai Amirta special train and Train No. 06729 Madurai - Punalur special train will resume service from June 20.
From Monday
Similarly, in the return direction, Train No. 06102 Kollam - Chennai Egmore special train, Train No. 06852 Rameswaram - Chennai Egmore special train, Train No. 02667 Nagercoil - Coimbatore special train, Train No. 06344 Madurai - Trivandrum Amirta special train and Train No. 06730 Punalur - Madurai special train services will be resumed from June 21.
Reservation for these trains has commenced.
