Indian Railways has decided to operate 40 pairs of additional special trains (80 trains) on specific routes from September 12 in a bid to cater to the increasing demands. Reservations for these trains will begin September 10.
The trains will be fully reserved and in addition to the special trains that are already under operation. The composition and route of these trains will be as per existing regular trains. These trains will have both AC and non-AC classes and general coach with reserved seats. There will be no unreserved coaches.
“We have been monitoring occupancy of our trains. Some of the trains were over occupied. Considering this and the COVID-19 situation, we are going to notify 40 pair of trains. All these trains will be special reserved trains," Railway Board Chairman Vinod Kumar Yadav said on Saturday.
Four pairs of these trains will operate in the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) area.
The special trains that will operate in the NFR area include Bengaluru Cantt-Guwahati Express (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday), Guwahati-Bengaluru Cantt Express (Monday, Tuesday and Sunday), Dibrugarh-Amritsar Express (Tuesday) and Amritsar-Dibrugarh Express (Friday). The remaining four trains are Agartala-Deoghar Express (Sunday), Deoghar-Agartala Express (Monday), Dibrugarh-Lalgarh Express (daily) and Lalgarh-Dibrugarh Express (daily).
At present, 230 special passenger trains are running connecting different cities of the country by following necessary COVID-19 guidelines. Of the 230 special trains, 15 pairs of passenger special AC trains (30 trains) being run since May 12 while 100 pairs (200 trains) started operation from June 1.