GUWAHATI: The Indian Railways is running a total of 6,369 trips of 380 special trains for the convenience of passengers and to clear extra rush during the summer season this year.
The Indian Railways is running 1,770 more trips this year, as compared to the total 4,599 trips, by 348 summer special trains, run in 2022.
While an average 13.2 trips per train was run during last summer, 16.8 trips per special train are being run in the current year
The major destinations connected are Patna-Secunderabad, Patna-Yesvantpur, Barauni-Muzaffarpur, Delhi-Patna, New Delhi-Katra, Chandigarh-Gorakhpur, Anand Vihar-Patna, Visakhapatnam-Puri-Howrah, Mumbai-Patna and Mumbai-Gorakhpur.
These 380 special trains, making a total of 6,369 trips, have 25,794 general coaches and 55,243 sleeper coaches.
The general coaches have a capacity of 100 passengers whereas the sleeper coaches have a capacity of 72 passengers in Integral Coach Factory (ICF) and 78 in Linke Hofmann Busch (LHB).
Irder to cater the summer rush, all the zonal Railways spread across the country have geared up to run special trips.
Through these special trains, connectivity from various states like Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi is being ensured.
South Western Railway, catering majorly the Karnataka region, is running a maximum 1,790 trips this summer season in comparison to 779 trips last year, whereas, the Western Railway, catering majorly to the state of Gujarat, has also geared up to run 1,470 trips, in comparison to 438 trips last year.
It is also pertinent to mention that this year; the South Central Railway is running as many as 784 trips, which is 80 trips more than the last year.
To deal with the heavy rush in the northern part of the country, the North Western Railway is running 400 trips; East Central Railway is running 380 trips. Northern Railway has also planned to run 324 trips this year.
However, neither the number of trains nor the number of trips run by specific special train (s) is static for the entire season.
Planning and running of special trains is a continuous process for which inputs are taken from all the communication channels 24x 7 like media reports, Social media platforms, Railway Integrated helpline number 139, apart from details of waitlist passengers in Passenger Reservation System (PRS) system to assess demand of trains on a particular route.
Based on this requirement, the number of trains and number of trips are augmented.
A watch on any malpractices, like cornering of seats, over-charging and touting activity is being kept by the team of commercial and Railway Protection Force (RPF) Staff.