Rail Budget 2009-10: 'Duronto' the non-stop train

KOLKATA: For the first time in the country, the Rail budget has introduced non stoprain services betwen key cities. Named ‘Duronto’, the new

service with AC and Non-AC sleepers will provide 12 new links across the country. These will provide point-to-point services between key cities. Some five out of the 12 links are from the East.

Four of these will be from West Bengal while one is from Orissa to Delhi. Depending on the success of this service, the minister promised to extend it to other cities.

The 12 new non-stop fast trains announced by Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee in her rail budget speech between select cities will take less time than even the Rajdhani Express to complete their journey. The trains will clock maximum speeds of 120 km per hour.

"This has been made possible since these trains, unlike the Rajdhani Express, will have no intermediate stoppages and run in much the same speeds clocked by Rajdhani," Railway Board Member -Traffic, Shri Prakash said.
For example, he said, the new bi-weekly non-stop train between New Delhi and Howrah will take 16 hours to cover the journey, as against 17 hours taken by Rajdhani Express. All 12 trains have been announced between cities where the volume of passenger traffic and demand is high.

"We are targeting long-distance passengers from terminal points like Kolkata and Delhi for instance. On this route, this will lead to higher availability of space for passengers along the intermediate stations like, Dhanbad and Asansol for instance," he explained. "Our aim is also to target higher passenger revenue , apart from higher freight earnings," he said.

"The trains will, however, have technical stoppages at a few stations like Gaya and Kanpur for instance for facilitating staff but the "transit time will come down drastically ", he said. There will be no change in the locomotive.

Railways are in the process of adding more capacity in terms of new lines and also the Dedicated freight corridor which will be able to accomodate these new trains, he said.

Duronto services will run between:

Howrah-Mumbai (AC) Non stop (Bi-weekly)

Howarh-Delhi Non Stop (Bi-weekly)

Sealdah-New Delhi Non Stop (Bi-weekly)

Kolkata-Amritsar Non Stop (Bi-weekly)

Bhubaneswar-Delhi Non Stop (weekly)