Mumbai: Circuitous route for holiday special trains receives initial nods

A passenger boards a special holiday train at Lokmanya Tilak Terminus in Kurla. File pic/Ashish Raje

The revolutionary idea of ensuring holiday special trains operate in a circuitous route, which may help Central Railway's (CR) Mumbai system in a big way, has received initial approvals.

On the city's railway network, where every second is important and every train is important, this idea could click very well. This year, the CR authorities ran 570 Diwali and Chhath Puja special train trips from Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur. The idea will cut short the turnaround period of trains and prevent them from coming in the path of suburban trains.

"We run about 30-plus holiday special trains every day during festive occasions. These trains enter Mumbai, intersect with suburban traffic, need space at stations, occupy platforms, their engines need to be reversed and coaches need parking. Then the same procedure has to be followed when sending them to their destination. What is being planned is that the train will arrive from its destination via Kasara, come till Kalyan and proceed via Pune back to the same destination - a circuitous route," outgoing divisional railway manager Rajneesh Goyal said.

As per statistics, 60-70 per cent of passengers alight from long-distance trains at Kalyan and by the time trains reach Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus or Lokmanya Tilak Terminus, they are almost empty.

"It will avoid terminal congestion. We need to look at cleanliness and watering. Both these can be done on the go. There is no need for the train to wait at the terminus station for four to six hours only to refill water inside coaches and clean them. Technically, a train needs to undergo maintenance after crossing 4,000 km. This way, a single train and crew can be efficiently used. The entire circuitous route distance is within that parameter and hence the plan was found technically feasible. We can start with two routes," he said.

More efficient escalators

CR's Mumbai division on Monday claimed it had reduced the shut-down time of escalators from 25-30 minutes to three using a new innovative technology. "As per a CR study, on a monthly average, escalators stop 21,000 times in a month, of these about 18,000 times are done manually by pressing the red stop button. The station master then gets an alert after which the staff or private contractor on duty begins to restart it by isolating it. All this takes 25-30 minutes," Goyal said.

"Now, digital sensors will restart the escalators remotely from the station control office. The remote mechanism will warn commuters and get the job done within three minutes unless there is some major job and it needs repair," Goyal added.

21,000
No. of times CR's escalators stop in a month