The Mysuru Division of South Western Railway resumed services of a few unreserved trains for the first time in over 8 months in what is considered to be a step towards normalisation of operations in the months ahead. This included 3 unreserved services and 2 reserved services.
With this 20 pairs of trains are now operating from Mysuru station – including weekly and bi-weekly services – as against 50 pairs of trains that used to be handled during the pre-pandemic days.
However, the occupancy rate in all the three unreserved trains was negligible but railway authorities said that this tends to be the norm for the initial few days. The originating passenger traffic increases over a period of time, they said.
In all, 171 passengers boarded the three unreserved trains in Mysuru on Monday. While 53 passengers boarded the Mysuru-Bangarpet MEMU train at Mysuru, there were 92 passengers on the Tipu Express while only 26 passengers boarded the Mysuru-Chamarajanagar passenger service.
In addition to these three unreserved trains, the authorities also resumed the Mysuru-Vijaypura-Solapur Gol Gumbaz Express – which is a fully reserved service – and in all there were 330 bookings from both Mysuru and Bengaluru as against the carrying capacity of 1,940 passengers. For Chamarajanagar -Tirupati express there were 79 bookings.
It was pointed out that Chamundi Express, which was among the first trains to be resumed after the lockdown was announced in the third week of March, initially used to run with handful of passengers. It began as a 16-coach service with 1,020 seats. But the occupancy rates gradually increased to over 95 per cent and now the train runs with 21 coaches with 1,938 seating capacity and the occupancy is almost 100 per cent. Coaches were augmented based on the passenger patronisation, said the officials.
