Misleading information once again in the new railway time table almost brought a big fight in a family from Madras. Recently, when a ticket for 4-5 family members was to be booked to Srirangam, one of the family members booked the ticket by the 10pm 6107 Mangalore Express.
When the person brought the ticket home, a fight erupted when another family member found from the time table that the train reaches Srirangam at 3am, a time of the night that was too early to go and disturb their hosts.
Finally, it was decided to cancel the ticket and book by 6177 Rock Fort Express which according to the time table was to reach Srirangam at 4am.
Thankfully on enquiries with more frequent train travellers, the person came to realise that arrival time at Srirangam for both these trains and several others was more on paper and that 6107 Mangalore Express reaches Srirangam at 415am and never at 3am as mentioned in the time table.
Once this was communicated to their family members, they heaped a sigh of relief and decided to travel by 6107Express.
This family was lucky that they were informed ahead of travel about the likely arrival. Many train travellers unaware of the likely arrival wake up on time in line with the timings mentioned in the time table only to realise that the train is still about 75-100kms away from their destination. Having once woken up and switched on the lights, these travellers tend to chat up with other family members/friends putting the ‘sleeping’ passengers at inconvenience.
While the information in the time table is the best possible arrival time for these trains, most of the time ( almost always) the trains reach much later because of the challenges relating to ‘single line’ and long stoppages at odd stations to facilitate ‘crossing’.
Table 7- Chennai- Ariyalur-Srirangam-Trichy Section
A look at table 7 of the new railway time table may leave an infrequent train traveller perplexed. As per this time table below, to cover a distance of 11kms between Srgm and Tpj, Mangalore Express takes over 90minutes, Rockfort takes around 90minutes, Howrah Kanyakumari Exp takes around 90minutes and Howrah Trichy Express takes 150minutes.
Table 8- Chennai- Thanjavur-Trichy Section
In this below table 8 of the new railway time table, Chozhan Exp and Rameswaram Exp take 100minutes to cover 50kms between Thanjavur and Trichy, while Tirupati Madurai Exp takes almost 2 ½ hours to cover this distance of 50kms ( which is a speed of about 20kms per hour)
Table 9- Coimbatore-Trichy- Mayiladuthurai Section
In the below Table 9, Jan Shatabdhi and Mysore Exp take 75minutes to cover a distance of 30kms which again is a speed of just over 20kms per hour.
No comments:
Post a Comment