In good news for passengers, the Indian Railways is all set to operate 392 festival special trains from October 20 till November 30 to deliver on the rising demand in view of the upcoming festive season.
The Railway ministry in a statement said that the decision was taken as the national carrier is anticipating a passenger rush during the upcoming festive season.
The special trains will be run for destinations such as Kolkata, Patna, Varanasi, Lucknow among others to cater to the growing demand in the ensuing holiday period of Durga Puja, Dussehra, Diwali and Chhatt puja, it said.
Check the full list of festival special trains:
These new festival special trains will operate only till November 30 and will not have a continued run.
These festival special trains will be mostly equipped with third AC coaches and the fares applicable will be those of special trains, said Indian Railways.
The timing of these trains will be as per regular trains. Zonal Railways will notify their schedule well in advance.
The South Central Railway (SCR) zone has also added another special train to Rajkot in Gujarat, adding to the list of special trains it has already announced for the forthcoming festival season.
"In order to facilitate the passengers, SCR will run a tri-weekly festival special train between Secunderabad and Rajkot," said a railway zone official.
The Secunderabad to Rajkot special train will run from October 20 to November 28, while the return train will operate from October 22 to November 30.
On Friday, the SCR zone had announced special trains to Guwahati and Hubballi, even as 14 more festival special trains are also expected to pass through the railway zone.
The passing trains are scheduled to originate from places such as Howrah, Puducherry, Ernakulam, Bhubaneswar, Tirupati, Chennai, Bengaluru and Rameshwaram.
Till now, the railways has pressed into service more than 300 mail/express trains which are now running regularly across the country.
The Railway Board in an order issued last week had said that these festival special trains will be operated at a speed of 55 kmph.
The Railways had suspended the operations of all passenger, mail and express trains from March 25 when the Covid-19 lockdown was imposed.
It started operating Shramik Special trains for migrant labourers from May 1 and 15 pairs of special air-conditioned trains from May 12.
Subsequently, 100 pairs of train services started on June 1, followed by 80 more trains from September 1 and 40 pairs of clone trains from September 12.
