Rake shortage takes toll on train punctuality

If sources in southern railway (SR) were to be believed, paucity of rakes has been contributing to the delayed arrival and departure of trains from Chennai Central more than smog and derailment.

Sources in SR admitted that the delay caused by smog or Kaziapet derailment had been sorted out. Even late on Wednesday, SR had rescheduled the departure of three trains from Chennai Central, including one to New Delhi and another bound for Chandigarh, which were delayed by over eight hours owing to late running of pairing trains. 

A senior SR officer who attributed the indefinite train delay to shortage of rakes conceded that the zone does not even have spare rakes to run trains during such exigencies. Numbers only vindicate the admissions of railway officers apropos of rake shortage. On any given day, SR is expected to have five per cent of non-AC and six per cent of AC coaches as bare requirement of spare coaches, better known in railway parlance as traffic spare. 

However, not even a percentage of coaches were being kept as traffic spare by SR, which utilises them for special trains run on regular basis. “Special trains were run during festive occasions in the past, but now they are run regularly. Most of these special trains would be operated for not less than four months, keeping spare coaches (read as rakes) occupied regularly. When such exigencies like later running of pairing trains arise, we are left without traffic spare,” said a senior SR officer requesting anonymity.  

A back of the envelope calculation would sufficiently explain the hand-to-mouth existence of the railway zone. Officials confided that the delay would continue unless the management makes the difficult decision of cancelling one or two trains instead of rescheduling them. 

Significantly, the unjustified rescheduling of trains does not affect the punctuality record of the zone as rescheduled trains have been exempted from timekeeper’s purview. Officials offer an option of cancelling one trip to avoid departure delays. 

For example, if Navjeevan Express from Ahmedabad, which is the pairing train for Coimbatore bound Cheran express, gets cancelled once, the arriving train from western India could be detained at Central and the subsequent departure to Ahmedabad from here would be on time, they said. But, the management does not want to take the difficult decision of cancelling that one trip to Coimbatore or Ahmedabad so that the delay could be prevented.

This is the only way to avoid indefinite delays and rescheduling of trains, particularly those heading to north India from here, the officials added.