Poorna Express to reach Ernakulam faster from November

Pune: Come November, the run time of Pune-Ernakulum Poorna Express will come down by almost two hours.

The Central Railway will enhance the speed of Poorna Express under the Indian Railways’ Mission Raftar project, under which the speed of 261 trains would be increased. Their run time would reduce by up to 110 minutes.

“According to information, the speed of 11097 Pune-Ernakulam Poorna Express (Weekly) will change so that it reaches its destination faster by two hours and 35 minutes with effect from November 2. The train will leave Pune at 9.55pm every Saturday from November instead of 11.30pm and reach Ernakulam Junction at 3.50am on Monday instead of 8am,” an official said.

The recent Union Budget touched upon different aspects of railways, but there is still haze on what the Pune division has got. “We are yet to get details from our headquarters in Mumbai. There can be some new trains, but we cannot comment until we get information,” an official told TOI, requesting anonymity.

The Central Railway officials earlier stated that all the intercity trains between Pune and Mumbai would run faster with the introduction of the push-pull technology. They also claimed that the railways was planning to run semi high-speed trains from Mumbai to Pune and Nashik to Vadodara on the lines of Vande Bharat Express between New Delhi and Varanasi.

According to the officials, if the plan succeeds, the travel time between Pune and Mumbai — separated by 192km — will come down to two hours from the present three hours and 15 minutes.

“At present, Mumbai-Pune Intercity Express is being run in push-pull mode. Quite a few trial runs have taken place. The other trains between the two cities will soon follow suit,” the official said.

(BOX)

Doubling of tracks

The Pune division officials stated that the first phase of doubling of tracks in the Pune-Miraj section had been completed.

The doubling of 16km railway tracks on the Shenoli-Bhawani Nagar-Takari stretch has been completed. “The necessary technical work has been done. The new technique based on ‘Visual Display Units’ have been installed. The unit has a panel board, which helps monitor trains’ movement. The doubling of tracks will help reduce the travel time from Pune to Miraj to one-and-a-half hours,” the public relations officer of the Pune railway division, Manoj Jhawar, said.