Railways to run 8 spl trains from June 1

Southern Railway will start running eight trains from June 1 within Tamil Nadu as part of measures to resume services in a phased manner. The train services connecting Madurai, Trichy, Coimbatore and other districts will be operated after a gap of 68 days. Two pairs of trains will connect Madurai and Trichy, while one pair will connect other major destination in the south.

According to a statement, train no. 02636 Madurai – Villupuram superfast special will leave at 7am , Dindigul at 8am, Trichy at 9.15am, Ariyalur at 10.10am and reach Villupuram at 12.05pm. Train no. 02635 Villupuram – Madurai superfast special will leave at 4pm , Ariyalur at 5.25pm, Trichy at 6.40pm, Dindigul at 8.05pm and reach Madurai at 9.20pm.

Train no. 02627 Trichy – Nagercoil superfast special will leave at 6am, Dindigul at 7.15am, Madurai at 8.15am, Virudhunagar at 8.57am, Tirunelveli at 11.10am and reach Nagercoil at 1pm. Train no. 02628 Nagercoil – Trichy superfast special will leave at 3pm and reach Trichy at 10.15pm.

Train no. 02084 Coimbatore – Mayiladuthurai special will leave at 7.10am and reach Mayiladuturai at 1.40pm. Train no. 02083 Mayiladuthurai – Coimbatore special will leave Mayiladuthurai at 2.50pm and reach Coimbatore at 9.15pm the same day. The train will not run on Tuesdays.

Meanwhile, passenger reservation counters and online websites opened for booking from 4pm on Saturday for the special trains. Railway officials said that only a minimum of two counters will be functional for booking tickets. In view of the extended time limit for claiming refund and to maintain less crowd refund will not be granted.

Railways have also advised passengers to make optimum use of online ticket booking facility to avoid crowding at the stations. Passengers have to arrive at the station 90 minutes before the train departure, where they will be screened.

While a few hundred seats were booked on day one, hundreds more are still available. More seats were booked for Monday’s journey, followed by Tuesday whereas more than 1,000 seats are available in the Trichy to Nagercoil train from Wednesday to Saturday. In the Nagercoil to Trichy train, more than 1,000 seats are available from Tuesday to Saturday. A similar trend was seen in the Villupuram to Madurai train and its pairing train.

Officials from Trichy railway division said that around 20% of Trichy quota was booked on all the three trains on the first day. A senior official from said the number of bookings were good on Saturday evening. He also expressed hope that the number would escalate on Sunday.

Senthil Kumar, who wanted to book a ticket to Madurai for his brother, said “I have dropped the idea because its difficult to drop him at Villupuram and come back. He also has to go some 100km from Madurai.”

Sources say the patronage for the special trains is likely to be low as passengers from Chennai will not be able to reach Villupuram or Katpadi which is more than 100km away without public transport. Those who reach from Madurai and Coimbatore may not find it convenient to travel by road to Chennai because the trains reach late at night.

“Trains are not being operated from Chennai because the city is a red zone and the number of cases are high. We want to avoid passengers from Chennai and do not expect passengers to travel to Villupuram and Katpadi to board these trains because getting epass for boarding trains will be difficult,” said a senior railway official.