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---DYNAMICS OF A PASSENGER TRAIN (PT)---
* (PT) with conventional loco & coach rake have slow acceleration and take a long time to gain speed.
* Similarly it has slow deceleration and take long time to halt and brake has to be applied much before the arrival of station.
* With normal inter station stop of 3-8 kms, the brake has to...
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be applied for next stop even before the PT reach max. sectional speed.
* As a result the (PT) seldom attain max. speed & avg. speed between two consecutive stops is very less or journey time is very large.
* With stoppage at almost every station, axg speed of (PTs) become much lesser than Express Trains (ET), resulting in ET overtaking PT. Avg speed of a typical PT normally range from 25 KMPH (Single line saturated section) to 40KMPH (double line electrified section)
* PT make large number of unwanted "long halts" at stations to give passage to Express trains to overtake them and avg speed further falls, which in turn lead to overtaking of following ET (ETs galore in IR network).
----LOSSES of SLOW SPEED of PT
Instances of overtaking of trains are a double whammy for Rlys,
(1) Sectional capacity gets reduced due to more incidences of overtaking
(2) much longer journey times result in poor patronage (smaller number of coaches) & poor revenue & higher losses in passenger trains.
----DEMUs & MEMU/EMU TRAINS
* These trains have power in a large number of axles resulting in higher adhesion/acceleration/acceleration/avg speeds. Avg speed oof PTs can be increased by 10-25% by adopting these trains
* These trains were introduced about 2 decades back with an aim to increase the average speed of passenger trains, and increase the sectional capacity.
* All passenger trains should have been converted to MEMU/DEMU, but only short distance ones could be converted. A large number of PTs (having longer journey above 3 hrs) could not be converted as these trains do not have toilet facility.
* IR should provide toilet facilities in MEMU/DEMU rake and use them in all PTs of IR network.