Rail service and travel by rail in India and Bangladesh

[jis]

When India announces it will build something, I guess one can safely assume that it will actually get built pretty soon, and not that they have just approved the intention to grant permission to do more studies to evaluate the potential possibility that might result from further studies into planning further studies.

These are short segments which should be up and running by 2030-31 according to the press release. The Ganga Bridge which will be a kilometer long structure may take a little longer. Further down stream it is much wider, for example at Farakka Barrage it is a 1.6km long (1 mile) long structure with flow control gates in the entire length of it and a double track railroad and a road on it.

Is Nimbyism a serious problem for rail construction in India? I understand agricultural land is for the most part held by smallholders, meaning that on a rail corridor of any length there must be a near astronomical number of parties to negotiate with.

Nimbyism or more appropriately disagreements about property acquisition can delay things a lot. Usually land acquisition is left to the State Governments to handle since they understand the local politics much better than any federal outfit. In India property rights are relatively well protected.

Exhibit A of the type of problems with property acquisition and transfer is the Tarakeshwar - Bishnupur line which is held up by a single village which wants the line to be routed differently so that it does not impinge on their village pond at a place called Bhabadighi. The project has been built from both ends to the periphery of the disputed area and train service runs from both ends to the last stop on each side of the village. After about 7 years finally a settlement has been reached and the gap is finally in the process of being filled, and EMU service will be able to run from Howrah all the way to Bishnupur as was intended, instead of terminating in the middle of nowhere at Goghat.

Another example is the Nasirpur Bridge near Azimganj across the Hooghly ( the river that flows through Kolkata) The bridge had been built some six years back but was not usable as one of the approach embankments could not be built due to land dispute. It was recently resolved and finally trains can start running. The venerable Darjeeling Mail is going to use this bridge to shorten its route to the north by some 50km.

 

[jis]

Domestic passenger rail service has resumed in Bangladesh after a suspension of 28 days due to unrest in the country. Cross border rail service remains suspended until further notice. Dhaka Metro will restart operations on the 17th. Several of its stations were gutted in fires during the unrest. Limited cross border transport of cargo by road has resumed, currently limited to emergency supplies. Cross border rail freight service remains suspended but might resume in the near future.

There was no effect on rail or road service to border towns on the Indian side during the outage in Bangladesh. Some of those areas are part of the Kolkata Suburban system (e.g. Gede, Bongaon, Petrapole, Hasnabad).

 

[jis]

Exchange of freight trains between India and Bangladesh has been resumed starting today after 47 days of suspension. For now only the Benapole - Petrapole and Gede - Darshana border has been opened for freight. No passenger service yet. All the other border rail crossing check posts are still closed.

 

[jis]

13 new Vande Bharat Expresses are being inaugurated in this week and last two weeks All are equipped with the Kavach collision avoidance and train protection system. Of them three are from Howrah (Kolkata):

• Gaya - where Gautam Buddha got his enlightenment, one of the most sacred places for Buddhists of the world. Huge number of people from abroad visit here. Gaya is in Bihar State on the Grand Chord the fastest route between Howrah and Delhi.
• Rourkela - Steel City in Odisha State, this train connects the industrial belt of Jharkhand State (incluing Tatanager the site of the first Steel Plant in India) and Kharagpur (the site of the first IIT) to Kolkata. For both this is an additional Vande Bharat, as they are already served by at least another Vande Bharat.
• Bhagalpur - Large city on the banks of the Ganga. This train connects Kolkata to a relatively backward area of the state of Bihar running on a newly constructed line opening up that area to easy access.Although of no consequence as far as Vande Bharat goes,, my paternal Grandfather was born here.

One really interesting route which should be quite successful as it connects a large city in Central India to one in South India is the one between Nagpur (Vidarbha region of Maharashtra State - Mumbai is in this state) and Secunderabad (Hyderabad).

Also the New Delhi - Varanasi Vande Bharat has now been upgraded to the first 20 car Vande Bharat to meet demand. Vande Bharat train architecturally allow growth by 4 cars units.

 

[jis]

Just saw an extended News Conference with the Railway Minister of India Mr. Ashwin Viashnav. Here are some salient points that I picked up on the fly.:

After evaluation of demand patterns it has been determined that Indian Railways (IR) needs to do much more to meet demand for non-airconditioned inexpensive travel. To address this segment 2,500 additional non-ac General Second Class (GS) Coaches will be manufactured and deployed by March '25. In the following two years 10,000 additional GS coaches will be manufactured and deployed. The goal is to have 4 to 6 GS coaches in each partially non-ac Mail/Express trains with popular trains getting at least 6.

Additionally fully non-AC Amrit Bharat Expresses with close to the best schedule achievable with a 130kph (~80mph) speed limit will be deployed on popular routes. These train will consist of 11 3-Tier Sleepers and 11 GS. This will provide a reliable platform for travel between any two points served by these train for under Rs. 500 (about $6!). The mention of 130kph is in recognition of IR safety standards which require trains traveling above 130kph (~80mph) to be sealed with no open windows.

I was surprised to learn that in this summer season coming to close when there is huge increase i9n demand, IR ran close to 20,000 special trains, i.e. trains not in regular schedule but run to clear extra demand beyond what can be handled by the regular schedule. There is something to be said in favor of such. We have often heard complaints here regarding the inability of Amtrak to do something like this, provide temporary additional service on demand,

In 2023, IR built and put into service 5,300km of new route trackage.

IR manufacturing facilities manufactured and deployed over 1200 new locomotives, mostly electric WAP7, WAP5, WAG9. Additional locomotives were built beyond these by Alstom and GE.

About 7,000 new Coaches were deployed, all LHB many self standing and some as part of Vande Bharat articulated sets. Additionally EMUs manufactured by various factories were deplopyed for suburban service in major metropolises.

The more than a dozen new Vande Bharat services inaugurated this week were of Vande Bharat V3, which comes with Kavach ATP pre-installed. The next major deployment will be of Vande Bharat V4 product which will be fully internationalized UIC compliant. The Indian version will be equipped with Kavach ATP. The international version will be customized for each customer. There have been inquiries about availability of V4 from Malaysia and Chile.

 

[west point]

Here is something for JIS to comment.

https://trainpalaceonwheels.com/train-route/?msclkid=d0cf743446051b5a5f2512dcc0a4f6b8

Another luxury train.

https://deccan-odyssey.com/?msclkid=8307f9120f2f19a820469ffae6965b02

 

[railiner]

It is truly staggering to hear off the massive amount of new equipment IR seems to easily acquire…

 

[jis]

The Vande Bharat EMU architecture enables reconfiguration of trains to various lengths to meet demand on specific routes. Exercising this flexibility so far 8 and 16 car train sets had been deployed. Starting on the 16th of September the first 20 cars set was deployed on the pre-existing New Delhi - Varanasi route replacing the 16 car set. Each of the eight car half of the 16 car set gets two cars added to it, one motor and one trailer, served out of the existing pantograph/transformer car.

It is truly staggering to hear off the massive amount of new equipment IR seems to easily acquire…

Without diving too much into non railroad stuff, one of the big sources of capital investment comes from the GST that was introduced several years back. They have been able to hold their Debt GDP ratio using the purchasing power parity GDP World GDP database at between 50% and 55% while investing massively in infrastructure. In straight exchange terms as reported by IMF their debt GDP ratio has hovered around 80%. They can maintain this level of investments as long as they manage to keep growing their GDP to stay ahead of the curve while keeping debt under control like they have so far in this century. There was a time when India was all but bankrupt in the early '90s.

Here is something for JIS to comment.

https://trainpalaceonwheels.com/train-route/?msclkid=d0cf743446051b5a5f2512dcc0a4f6b8

Another luxury train.

https://deccan-odyssey.com/?msclkid=8307f9120f2f19a820469ffae6965b02

Both are tourist trains. Not commercial transportation operation. Their ridership is minuscule in the overall scheme of things but they are incredibly profitable since the fares they can charge are way more than what it costs to maintain and operate them. They run on relatively lose schedules so an hour or two this way or that way are quite OK, and hence do not interfere in operation of priority express/mail trains. They operate with enormous schedule padding too. Afterall there is no need to get from anywhere to anywhere fast.