Secunderabad and Nampally railway stations became a beehive of activity on Monday as hundreds of pre-booked passengers arrived to get into nine special trains bound for destinations as diverse as New Delhi, Danapur, Howrah, Visakhapatnam, Mumbai and Guntur among others on the first day of partial restoration of train services.
Around 13,000 passengers were on these trains, four of which moved from Secunderabad platforms 1 and 10 while three of them began their journey from Hyderabad. The two others were Tirupati-Nizamabad Rayalaseema Express and H.S. Nanded-Amritsar Sachkhand Special Express.
Senior railway officials informed that there was good demand for the trains and waitlists were issued for up to 100 passengers. Only those with confirmed tickets were advised to come to the respective stations 90 minutes in advance for the mandatory thermal screening and non-contact ticket checking.
While each of the stations had opened one entry and one exit, the amount of rush convinced the railway officials concerned to open up few more entry and exit points from Tuesday. “There is a lot of positive change in railways like screening, social distancing and ticket checking. I am Central government employee and going to join work in Nagpur,” said Revathi, a passenger.
Another passenger, Gulshan Kumar, who was bound for Danapur, said, “I have been stuck here for the last two months and am thankful for this service. All safety precautions seem to have been taken care of.”
Contact-less sanitisers were placed for passengers and masks were mandatory. “I have been waiting for a while for trains to begin as I have to go to Delhi,” said another passenger, P.R. Reddy.
“We have been here for the past three months and are now leaving for our hometown, Guntur, as we came to know a train is running,” said an elderly passenger, Sambasiva Rao.
South Central Railway general manager Gajanan Mallya visited the Secunderabad station to check on the arrangements and alerted officials towards taking all steps necessary for passengers to have a safe and secure journey.