The Indian Railways gave a Diwali gift to passengers travelling from Mumbai to Delhi by launching a special Rajdhani train between the two cities.
The new Rajdhani train would cut short the travelling time between the national capital and financial capital of India.
Currently, there are two Rajdhani Express trains -the August Kranti Rajdhani and the Mumbai Central New Delhi Rajdhani, which run between Delhi to Mumbai.
Both of them take more than 15 hours to cover the distance between Mumbai and the Delhi.
While the August Kranti Rajdhani takes around 17 hours to reach New Delhi, the Mumbai Central-New Delhi takes around 15 hours at an average speed of 89 kmph, to travel 1386 km.
The Railway Ministry took to Twitter to inform that the train would not have a flexi fare system according to the dynamic pricing mechanism of the railways.
The above stated announcement means that the fares of the train will not jump by 10% over every 10% of seat bookings, which currently is the procedure of booking tickets for Rajdhani trains.
The Mumbai Rajdhani has a sanctioned speed of 130 kmph. However, numerous curves and speed restrictions on the route bring the average speed down to about 89 kmph. The railways is hoping to increase this to 90-95 kmph.
While an effort is on to increase average speed, the maximum speed of the new Rajdhani is likely to be maintained at 130 kmph.
Following are some of the key features of the new Rajdhani between Mumbai and New Delhi:-
The new service would be a tri-weekly special service with only one rake comprising of 18 coaches.
The train would only stop at Kota, Vadodara and Surat stations.
The train will start at 4:15 PM from Hazrat Nizamuddin station, Delhi.
The catering services in this train will be optional and the passengers shall have the choice to opt out of catering services.
The Delhi-Mumbai line is important for the railways as the route, once the reserve of business travellers, has been losing passengers to airlines. This route is also one of the two to be developed into special corridors with semi-high speed services.
