There is good news for devotees who want to reach Shirdi to attend the kaakad aarti of Sai Baba which takes place from 5.15am to 5.45am. Starting March 20, the Central Railway (CR) will operate a train that will reach Shirdi in less than seven hours.
After commissioning of the dedicated railway line planned from
Puntamba to Shirdi, CR was run-ning Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus-Sainagar Shirdi passenger train every day.
Introduced in the last week of February, the daily passengers train goes via Daund towards Ahmednagar right up to Puntamba to Shirdi and covers a distance of 455.2 km. It takes around 13 hours to reach Shirdi.
“However, this new train will go via Nashik right up to Manmad without halting at Puntamba to reach Shirdi. It will have only six halts after CST at Dadar, Kalyan, Igatpuri, Nasik, Kopargaon and Shirdi,” said Sriniwas Mudgerikar, chief PRO of CR.
The special train will leave CST on March 20 at 10.20 pm and reach Shirdi at 5 am the next day. It will then return to Mumbai on the same day.
However, a senior CR official said that the special train would be run on experimental basis to see whether people would benefit from it. “If it is successful it will be introduced as weekend special in
the future.”
