Daily 173 trains and more than 200 special trains for Sankranti meant more than 2 lakh passengers a day! In the last few days, the entire South Central Railway (SCR) men and machinery were on their toes to handle this gigantic task.
Passenger amenities
It is not only for monitoring the movement of trains including special trains and tackling the rush of passengers at major railway stations, the railway personnel have to check on various systems to ensure a smooth and safe travel of rail passengers. Senior officials informed that at the Secunderabad, Hyderabad and Kacheguda stations most staff and officers of the commercial department stationed themselves on the platform to personally check on passenger amenities and facilities, handling rush at booking counters, etc.
Additional Railway Protection Force personnel were deployed to ensure optimal security with continuously monitoring the crowd through CCTV cameras to avoid any untoward incident while also preventing any stampedes.
Catering facilities have to be ensured and ticket checking staff were deployed in huge numbers to monitor crowd control, prevent ticketless travellers and disseminate information of train movements, they said.
“We could not be tough with passengers during boarding because it would look insensitive,” said officials.
After a breather of couple of days, South Central Railway is getting ready to handle the return rush of traffic of the rail passengers.
