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Detention of passenger trains irks commuters
Office-goers and students want timings to be changed
Regular travellers of passenger trains running on Madurai-Shencottah section are frustrated over the long detention of trains at Sankarankoil and Rajapalayam railway stations in the mornings and evenings respectively.
The commuters, mostly office-goers and school and college students, want railway administration to change train timings so that...
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passengers are not often made to wait for close to an hour to give way for Pothigai Superfast Express on the single broad gauge line section.
“The detentions happen at least thrice a week,” complained V. Sathyanarayanan, who is often not able to reach his office at Virudhunagar Collectorate on time.
Shencottah-Madurai passenger which was scheduled to arrive at Virudhunagar at 9.30 a.m. often arrived at 9.55 a.m. or 10 a.m. To travel from the railway station to the Collectorate too consumed much time, he said. “My late arrival at office can be condoned when it happens once in a blue moon, but not frequently. This is the case with many commuters,” he added.
Commuters attributed the delay to the late arrival of Pothigai Express. “Railway officials say they cannot halt the Superfast Express even for a couple of minutes and hence the passenger trains are made to wait for at least 30 minutes,” another commuter, T. Ayyappan, said. Similarly, in the evening, the crossing of Madurai-Shencottah passenger and Chennai-bound Superfast Express is supposed to take place at Sankarankoil at 7.30 p.m. But, often the passenger train is made to wait for more than 30 minutes at Rajapalayam.
Mr. Sathyanarayanan said people, especially women, who had to travel to far off villages, often missed their buses and had to wait for long in darkness. Stating that the travel time between Rajapalayam and Sankarankoil was only 25 minutes, the commuters have already requested the railway authorities to advance or delay the timings of the passenger trains on both directions by 10 minutes.
A railway official said the timings of arrival and departure of three superfast trains – Pothigai, Nellai and Pearl City – at Madurai railway junction were tightly packed.
“These trains have to change locomotives at Madurai. If Pothigai Express is delayed by 10 minutes, it will have a cascading effect on the other two trains as shunting of locomotives becomes a challenge,” the official said.
However, another official said if the change of locomotives for Pothigai Express was shifted to Dindigul or Tiruchi, this problem could be addressed to a great