Bleak future for Kolkata's double decker trains

Kolkata: The Eastern Railways (ER) is staring at a bleak future with no takers for its double decker trains. The Railway Board is yet to respond to its proposal of running it in routes where it might have a reasonable demand.  

“We wrote to the Railway Board four months back saying we were not in a position to run the train after we suffered huge losses. But there has been no response,” an ER spokesperson said.

Railway minister Suresh Prabhu had announced last month that Utkrisht Double-Decker AC Yatri (Uday) Express would start operating in some high demand routes from July this year, including Delhi to Lucknow, Chennai to Thiruvananthapuram etc. “We were aware of the Railway’s plan earlier, which is why we had written that our train could be run as part of the Utkrisht Double Decker. But there has been no communication on the part of the Board,” an ER source
said.

The country’s first double decker train was flagged off in the Howrah - Dhandad route in 2011 but the service was completely stalled in March 2015 with the ER suffering huge losses. The train is lying unused at the Howrah station since.

Trouble had cropped up since the train started its trial run. The outer shell scraped against the edge of the platforms, resulting in deep scratch marks on the exterior. This posed a risk for the passengers.

The ER shortened the width of platforms along its path at nearly 20 stations, and even raised the height of overhead wires along a single track for the entire Howrah Dhanbad route since the double-decker coaches are higher than conventional ones.

“In spite of our sincere efforts to make this service operational, things did not work out. The average occupancy remained between 15 and 20 per cent. It gets difficult to run a train unless the minimum occupancy is about 40-45 per cent. Hence we were compelled to stop it,” the source informed.