Almost 50 days after stopping passenger trains, the Railways on Tuesday partially resumed services with eight trains operating to and from New Delhi, ferrying over 10,000 passengers.
“Indian Railways begins restoration of passenger train services with eight trains today [Tuesday]. Starting in a graded manner, these trains would run from New Delhi, Mumbai, Howrah, Ahmedabad, Patna and Bengaluru,” a Railway spokesperson said.
The first to run was the New Delhi-Bilaspur train that left the national capital at 4 p.m. with a booking of 1,177 passengers. The other two trains to leave from Delhi were the New Delhi-Dibrugarh special train with booking for about 1,122 passengers that departed at 4.45 p.m., and the 9.15 p.m. New Delhi-Bengaluru train with 1,162 bookings.
“The three special trains ... from New Delhi with more than 3,400 passengers... Additionally, five special trains will depart from other cities towards New Delhi. These special train services will be in addition to the Shramik Specials,” the spokesperson said.
Giving details, the Indian Railways said a total of 741 PNRs were generated for 1,177 passengers travelling in the New Delhi-Bilaspur train, 442 PNRs for passengers travelling in New Delhi-Dibrugarh special train and 804 PNRs for passengers travelling in New Delhi-Bengaluru special train.
Till Tuesday evening, 90,331 tickets for 1,69,039 passengers were booked across the 15 pairs of special trains, meaning 30 trains travelling to and fro, the Railways said.
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The Railways said since May 1, it had run 575 Shramik Special trains till 4 p.m. on May 12, in which 463 trains had reached destination and 112 were in transit. “More than 6.8 lakh people have travelled,” it said.
Entry gate
The Northern Railways said in a statement that entry to the New Delhi railway station would be allowed only from the Paharganj side for all confirmed ticket holders and no entry for passengers would be permitted from the Ajmeri Gate side.
For now, the Railways has issued a timetable for trains to be run between May 12 and 20.
These trains will have only AC classes i.e. first, second and third AC.
