Indian Railways' "Mist Connection"

[WhoozOn1st]

An L.A. Times feature about an intercity winter adventure on India's rails...

Lulled into a fog-induced limbo aboard an Indian train - http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-india-fog-20130201,0,1652230.story

"We're late. Very late. A nine-hour overnight train trip has turned into 16, and we're still miles from nowhere. It's winter in northern India and that means fog, great gobs of the stuff wreathing the land, causing shapes to appear out of the mist before slinking back into the void.

"Trains slow to a crawl. Airports come to a standstill. You're thinking: Cue the apoplectic passengers, minds racing to reconfigure digital calendars, a flurry of calls, texts, the jitter of tapping feet.

"But life in India maintains its timeless grace, at least here aboard the Prayagraj Express, making its way from central Uttar Pradesh state to New Delhi.

 

[the_traveler]

"Eight hours late ..." - some days, the EB can only dream about that! :giggle:

 

[Texan Eagle]

"Eight hours late ..." - some days, the EB can only dream about that! :giggle:

Fog has been an eternal problem in northern India since years. You can't ask nature to co-operate and remove fog, but steps can be taken to improve technology to run trains through fog. Indian Railways has grand plans for it on paper but I don't see anything great done so far.

Every winter there are several accidents caused due to fog too, drivers overshooting signals, running into another train etc, this winter, *touchwood* there have not been any fog related accidents so far.

Incidentally, just before coming here, I was checking live train running status on RailRadar and I see northern India has a huge number of trains in red (delayed) while west and south India carry on business as usual with majority trains in blue.

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

There may be lots of fog in India, but their trains still have a lot better OTP than Amtrak LDTs.

 

[WhoozOn1st]

There may be lots of fog in India, but their trains still have a lot better OTP than Amtrak LDTs.

But Amtrak's passengers have a greater life expectancy.

 

[jis]

There may be lots of fog in India, but their trains still have a lot better OTP than Amtrak LDTs.

Not in the foggy areas. Actually OTP is so bad that I have given up trying to take the train from Delhi to Kolkata or back in the winter. Even Rajdhanis at a pinch can get delayed 8 to 12 hours or just plain canceled due to lack of availability of rakes (consists). More mundane trains are known to get delayed much more than that. This winter when I was in India, there were some trains running as much as 33 hours late!

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

There may be lots of fog in India, but their trains still have a lot better OTP than Amtrak LDTs.

Not in the foggy areas. Actually OTP is so bad that I have given up trying to take the train from Delhi to Kolkata or back in the winter. Even Rajdhanis at a pinch can get delayed 8 to 12 hours or just plain canceled due to lack of availability of rakes (consists). More mundane trains are known to get delayed much more than that. This winter when I was in India, there were some trains running as much as 33 hours late!

But American trains get delayed by snow! Or repeated minor accidents, even though India has had some very bad major accidents.

 

[Texan Eagle]

There may be lots of fog in India, but their trains still have a lot better OTP than Amtrak LDTs.

Not in the foggy areas. Actually OTP is so bad that I have given up trying to take the train from Delhi to Kolkata or back in the winter. Even Rajdhanis at a pinch can get delayed 8 to 12 hours or just plain canceled due to lack of availability of rakes (consists). More mundane trains are known to get delayed much more than that. This winter when I was in India, there were some trains running as much as 33 hours late!

But American trains get delayed by snow! Or repeated minor accidents, even though India has had some very bad major accidents.

Not trying to justify India's safety records with trains, it has been quite bad no doubt, but it is not as bad as some people make it feel. Look at the sheer number of passenger trains that run in India compared to what Amtrak runs. Every time there is an accident it makes big news, but when 11,000 trains take passengers home safely per day, that does not make news every day. Considering the number difference, if Indian Railways has one accident involving passenger fatality per year while Amtrak has one in fifty years, the numbers would still not be too much off in terms of "fatality/number of passengers carried".

 

[George Harris]

Not trying to justify India's safety records with trains, it has been quite bad no doubt, but it is not as bad as some people make it feel. Look at the sheer number of passenger trains that run in India compared to what Amtrak runs. Every time there is an accident it makes big news, but when 11,000 trains take passengers home safely per day, that does not make news every day. Considering the number difference, if Indian Railways has one accident involving passenger fatality per year while Amtrak has one in fifty years, the numbers would still not be too much off in terms of "fatality/number of passengers carried".

Exactly!!

If I recall correctly, I saw statistics a few years ago that said exactly that. On a per passenger km. the Indian Railways system had a better safety record than any system in Western Europe. I am reasonable sure that little fact got buried as quickly as possible.

It is not only India with heavy passenger loading on their railway. There are other Asian systems that also carry passenger loadings that simply have to be seen to be grasped by those that have never been to those parts of the world.

 

[jis]

The fact that in India, people wait more eagerly and also with much trepidation for the Railway Budget than the National Budget, which gets presented to the Parliament a few weeks after the Railway Budget should give some indication about how important Indian Railways is perceived to be by the nation as a whole.

 

[Texan Eagle]

The fact that in India, people wait more eagerly and also with much trepidation for the Railway Budget than the National Budget, which gets presented to the Parliament a few weeks after the Railway Budget should give some indication about how important Indian Railways is perceived to be by the nation as a whole.

Two days, not few weeks. Unless it is a holiday, the annual Railway Budget is presented in the Parliament on 26th February and National Budget on 28th Feb (29th in leap year). On the day of Railway Budget, the members of the Parliament actually fight and shout and pull all strings to get more trains, more station amenities, more rail infrastructure for their respective states.. something we can only wish for here in the United States

 

[DET63]

Do "mist connections" in India ever result in bustitutions?

 

[George Harris]

Do "mist connections" in India ever result in bustitutions?

You are kidding, of course. See if you can find somewhere the average count for a passenger train in India. "Bustitution" is simply not practical, perhaps inconceivable would be a better word.

 

[Texan Eagle]

Do "mist connections" in India ever result in bustitutions?

An average 24 car long express train in India carries around 1500 passengers, so to bustitute all of them, you'd require around 30 buses! Not practical.

If a train is canceled or significantly delayed, you are allowed to cancel your ticket and get 100% money back, that's about it. Beyond that, you are on your own.

The only times I think they have used "bustitution" is when a train meets a major accident and survivors need to be carried away from the accident site. However even in those cases, they first try to see if an undamaged track is available close to accident site and will send out a full special train, not buses, to bring all the passengers from the accident site!

 

[cirdan]

An average 24 car long express train in India carries around 1500 passengers, so to bustitute all of them, you'd require around 30 buses! Not practical.

Though I expect India has lots of parallel rail routes so that virtually no matter what happens further up the line, long-distance trains can be diverted and still reach their destination.

In the US, so many parallel lines have either been dismantled totally or allowed to decay to the point that they can no longer be used by passenger trains.

Hence the need for bustitution at the smallest of incidents.

 

[Texan Eagle]

An average 24 car long express train in India carries around 1500 passengers, so to bustitute all of them, you'd require around 30 buses! Not practical.

Though I expect India has lots of parallel rail routes so that virtually no matter what happens further up the line, long-distance trains can be diverted and still reach their destination.

In the US, so many parallel lines have either been dismantled totally or allowed to decay to the point that they can no longer be used by passenger trains.

Hence the need for bustitution at the smallest of incidents.

That is correct. In most incidents, if a route is blocked for whatsoever reasons, trains are re-routed via alternate routes meeting the original route as soon as possible beyond the affected part. Indian Railways has the advantage that, unlike here in the US, there are no "freight only" and "unsuitable for passenger train" routes. If there is a track, passenger trains can be routed through it! The only requirement is, they need to get a crew that has road learning for that route, and since there are hundreds of crew bases across the country, it is generally easy to find a "learned" crew and swap out the old crew to continue on the diverted route.