Southern Railway is a passenger oriented railway and continuously strives to improve its services and efficiency. The zonal railway takes numerous initiatives to enhance the safety and security of its passengers and to improve cleanliness in railway premises and onboard trains. The various developmental activities undertaken by the zone have resulted in increased customer satisfaction and comfortable journey for passengers. Running of special trains and augmentation of trains by extra coaches have helped the passengers a great deal.
The important achievements and performance highlights of Southern Railway during April, 2015 are given below.
- To help the waitlisted passengers and to cater to the extra rush of traffic, Southern Railway ran 134 special trains during the month of April, 2015.Moreover, 60 unreserved special trains were also run by the zone.
- Various Mail/Express trains were temporarily augmented by 1202 coaches during April, 2015 to ease the extra rush of passengers.
- IRCTC ran 10 pairs of special trains in April, 2015 to meet the requirements of pilgrims and tourists.
- 32 nos. of 6 car services have been augmented to run as 9 car services in Chennai Beach – Velachery MRTS section of Chennai Division.
- GPS based Passenger Information System has been provided in 46 EMU / MEMU rakes which helps in providing audio-visual announcements for easy identification of the next station and the destination station by passengers.
- To enhance safety, TPWS (Train Protection Warning System) has been provided in 81 EMU / MEMU motor coaches.This system ensures strict adherence to signal aspects and permanent speed restrictions automatically even if the motorman fails to do so.
- Section speed has been increased in Tiruvalangadu – Arakkonam 4th line from 90 kmph to 100 kmph.Section speed has also been increased in Mayiladuthurai – Tiruvarur single line from 80 kmph to 90 kmph and in Nidamangalam – Mannargudi single lie from 50 kmph to 80 kmph.
- Station Ticket Booking Sevak has been commissioned at 13 locations and e-catering has been started in 21 trains by IRCTC.
- 2 level crossings were closed during April 2015.1 level crossing was eliminated by diverting the traffic to another level crossing.
- With a view to improving the state of cleanliness in railway areas, the Medical Department of Southern Railway conducted 96 cleanliness drives and 35 campaigns with participation by about 2800 volunteers.Moreover, to ensure the safety and quality of food provided to passengers, 82 Food Samples were collected for analysis under Quality Control and Food Safety and Standards Act in the zone.
- As part of health promotion activities, 118 Health Awareness camps and 4 Medical Screening camps were conducted in the zone benefiting 178 employees and dependants.
- On Board Housekeeping Service has been introduced in Train No.16787 / 16788 Tirunelveli – Jammu Tawi – Tirunelveli bi-weekly express trains.
- Electrified traction between Virudhunagar – Tuticorin/Vanchi Maniyachchi – Tirunelveli has been commissioned.With this, the entire route from Chennai Egmore to Kanniyakumari via. Villupuram, Tiruchchirappalli, Madurai and Tirunelveli has been taken on electric traction.
- For the convenience of passengers, especially the senior citizens and the differently abled, 6 nos. of escalators have been commissioned – 1 in Thiruvananthapuram, 1 in Ernakulam junction, 1 in Ernakulam Town, 1 in Chengannur and 2 in Tambaram.
- Paperless Unreserved ticketing System on mobile phone was inaugurated by the Hon’ble Union Railway Minister at Chennai Egmore through video conferencing on 22.04.2015.
- Hitherto, applications were received for way-leave facilities/track crossings such as water pipe line, cable, sewage/effluent pipes, electrical, pedestrian pathway directly from the applicants in sub-divisional/divisional office for processing which was time consuming.In order to ensure prompt clearance of track crossing proposals, online Registration of track crossing proposals was successfully implemented on Indian Railways with effect from 01.04.2015, duly giving wide publicity through advertisements in newspapers.Now, the applicants can view the status of their applications online and effective monitoring is being made at various levels for timely clearance.
