The Hindu Business Line : Speeding up train travel

THE Railways has decided to speed up. Though a proposal to run trains at over 250 km per hour has been dropped on cost considerations, it has decided to upgrade the Delhi-Agra section to 150 km per hour.

At present, the fastest train runs on the Delhi-Kanpur section, where the Lucknow Shatabdi is rated to touch 130 km per hour. In practice, however, the train, with coaches from Alstom in Germany, runs at under 120 km per hour.

"Traditionally, the Delhi-Kanpur section is the speed testing track for Indian Railways. But as the Railways is losing the Agra-bound traffic to the roads sector, we decided to upgrade this stretch. Besides, it is a smaller section, so it is easier to upgrade," a senior Railway Board official told Business Line.

The official said that the superfast trains on the section like the Delhi-Agra-Bhopal Shatabdi will hurtle down the tracks at closer to the top rated speed of 150 km per hour.

The official said that minor upgradation in the tracks will enable the Railways to speed up and the new coaches, as also the new 6,000 HP electric locomotives from ABB, will be "good enough" to take the high speed.

Certain sections of the 760-km Konkan Railway route along the western coast have already been rated for 150 km per hour, but the top speed allowed is under 100 km per hour.

"The speed on Konkan Railway was restricted to 40 km per hour after the June 22 accident involving a holiday special train. It has subsequently been increased. Though Konkan Railway has employed the latest technology on its tracks, it will be allowed to go only up to 100 km per hour because of the hilly terrain and the fact that it is a single line route," the official said.

A proposal by Rites Ltd for running high-speed trains in the country had been shot down due to the prohibitive cost of laying such tracks.

"Although we can easily develop the technology to run high-speed trains, we feel that there is no demand for such an expensive rail service in the country. We feel that none of our customers would like to pay double the fare only for the thrill of travelling at 250 km per hour, they can fly instead," he said.

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Speeding up train travel