Railway Ministry’s decision to standardise LHB rakes (train sets) of long distance non-premium trains with seven Second Class Sleeper (SL) and six 3-Tier AC coaches has not gone down well with patrons who criticised the move of reducing SL coaches and increasing 3-AC coaches.
The Ministry, on June 24, directed all zonal railways to standardise LHB rakes of long distance trains to improve punctuality, for optimum utilisation of rakes and for enabling inter-operatibility. While patrons had no qualms with premium (air-conditioned) trains, they were miffed with the Ministry’s decision to meddle with common man’s mail/express trains.
As per the directive, long-distance non-premium trains would also have four unreserved, two 2-Tier AC, one pantry car, one power car and two luggage-cum-brake van coaches, totalling 22 coaches.
Commuters reactions
K.N. Krishna Prasad said there should be at least 10 sleeper coaches in a rake, for the benefit of common man. Hemanth Kumar said coach composition should be decided by respective Divisions depending upon the passenger requirement at the local level and the Ministry should not enforce this from the centre. Railways’ move forces people to go for AC coaches when sleeper coaches are full, he said.
Abhishek said all trains did not require 2-AC coaches while a few 3-AC coaches were sufficient in most. Yogendra Swamy said uniform standardisation of rakes was not advisable in a country that had different climatic conditions across regions.
Regarding premium day time services, namely Shatabdi etc., the Ministry said they should have 14 Chair Cars, two Executive CCs and two power cars. Non premium day services should have two AC Chair Cars, 12 second sitting, two unreserved and one each power car and luggage-guard van coaches. Long distance premium trains should have twelve 3-AC, five 2-AC, two 1-A, one pantry and two power car coaches, the Ministry said.
The Ministry said the standardisation should be given effect to from No Booking date. In case 22 coaches could not be accommodated due to infrastructure constraints like short length pit-line/ platform, zonal railways may effect standardisation depot-wise, the Ministry said.