Beauty pageant: Southern Railway to crown its ‘most good-looking train’

In a first in the zone or perhaps even Indian Railways, the zone has decided to select one train every year in the entire zone to confer the ‘most beautiful’ train award from this fiscal. Informally done by the mechanical department thus far, the idea was formalised after holding elaborate consultations with various stakeholder departments recently. 

DTNext has reliably learnt that Southern Railway General Manager Vashishta Johri has also given his consent for conducting a beauty pageant the trains that come under the southern zone. Southern Railway sources in the know of things told DTNext that each of the six divisions would nominate a train each and the headquarters would pick the most beautiful train. The award would be distributed to the division during the annual railway week celebration held at the end of the financial year. The selection would be done by a panel comprising the heads of various departments like commercial, engineering and operation at the zonal headquarters. 

Mechanical department would be excluded from the adjudication panel as they maintain the coaches, a senior Southern Railway officer said requesting anonymity. The heads of departments would inspect the trains when the they arrive at Chennai Central or if need be, they may also visit other places. “Unlike routine inspections, the award inspection would not include checking toilets or water quality. Instead, it would focus on other areas like seat cushion and even lighting. The criteria for judging will mainly be on the interior and exterior appearance of the train,” a Southern Railway officer explained. The award would prompt the six divisions to compete with each other and try new ideas like fitting extra mirrors or even room sprays or even chart pasting method, whichever they feel would optimise the visual appeal of the trains run by the division, the officer explained. 

Collecting any award in the presence of the who’s who of the zone during the annual rail week celebration has always been a matter of pride for the Southern Railway employees, so they would do their innovative best to win the award, a senior officer said, reasoning that the traveling public would ultimately benefit given that any innovation the officers try would mean extra value for people’s money.