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The Hindu
The Hindu
National
Special Correspondent

State’s rail corridor comes alive as first train chugs in

Relief at last: Passengers coming out of the Rajdhani Superfast from New Delhi at the Thiruvananthapuram Central railway station on Friday. (Source: S. Gopakumar)

After a gap of 60 days, the Thiruvananthapuram Central railway station turned active again on Friday to receive and despatch the 02432/02431 New Delhi-Thiruvananthapuram Central-New Delhi Rajdhani Superfast special trains.

The 02432 special train, the first from Delhi to Kerala following the lockdown, arrived at the station with 329 passengers at 5.10 a.m. The health screening of the passengers lasted over three hours at 10 help desks .

The commuters were allowed in batches of 20 on the basis of home districts from the coaches to avoid crowding at the help desks.

Of the 329 people who alighted here, one from Pathanamthitta with symptoms of COVID-19 was shifted to the General Hospital. Others were allowed to go home and observe 14-day quarantine.

To Kanyakumari

KSRTC buses were provided to those from other districts. State RTC buses took 61 persons from Tamil Nadu to Kanyakumari.

Of the 411 people who alighted at Ernakulam Junction at 1.20 a.m., all cleared the screening and were asked to go for 14 days’ home or institutional quarantine. But, seven of the 165 who got down at Kozhikode on Thursday night were shifted to the Government Medical College Hospital, Kozhikode.

Later, the stations and the vehicles used for transporting the passengers were sanitised. The same rake was used to operate the return train (02431) to New Delhi at 7.45 p.m., with 300 people boarding the train at Thiruvananthapuram. There are 373 people booked for the journey from Ernakulam Junction and 162 from Kozhikode. The train will reach New Delhi at 12.40 p.m. on Sunday.

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