Contributors

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Indian Trains get new numbers

LUCKNOW: Get in tune with the new numerical identities of the trains. The mail/express trains, Shatabdi and Rajdhani have all got new numbers. Northern Railway (NR) on Thursday released the list of new train numbers. Lucknow Mail has been given a five-digit identity (12229/12230) and so is Shatabdi Express (12003/12004).

Come December 20 and railways will implement five digit numbers in place of the existing four digit numbers for all the trains. The numbers of existing express trains largely continue unchanged but have been prefixed with first digit of 1. Lucknow-New Delhi Duronto Express is numbered as (12271/12272) while New Delhi-Guwahati Rajdhani Express is (12435/12436). The new train numbers are available on railway website.

"The reservation system will show the new numbers (on tickets) after December 22", said Neeraj Sharma, Sr DCM, Lucknow division, NR.

The Railways has decided to implement the five-digit train numbering scheme because the existing one (four-digit numbering scheme) has exhausted as there are more than 10,000 trains running every day. Besides, need has also arisen to integrate passenger and suburban train services in various information systems such as control office application, passenger reservation system and other software applications.

The passenger trains will be first numbered as per the present four digit train numbering scheme. To this four digit number, a fifth digit shall be prefixed as digit `0' for special trains, digit 5, 6 and 7 for conventional passenger trains, MEMU and DEMU trains, respectively. The suburban services in Kolkata will begin with digit 3, in Mumbai with digit 9 and in other parts with digit 4.

It is now proposed to capture all passenger trains running over Indian Railways for various software applications by giving them a unique number. Thus, there is need to shift to 5-digit train numbering scheme from a 4-digit train numbering scheme as Indian Railways presently runs over 11,000 passenger carrying trains on an average per day while 4-digit scheme can have train numbers only up to 9,999. The 5-digit numbering scheme is to be made effective from December 20, 2010.

The names of the trains are not being changed/modified. The introduction of new system covering all kinds of passenger carrying trains run by Indian railways will lay scientific and logical basis for numbering of trains on all India basis for all the trains which was earlier confined to express trains only, enabling better dissemination of information to the public.

The new system will go a long way in monitoring the movement of trains more effectively on all India basis and in facilitating dissemination and management of train information more scientifically benefiting the public/customers. This major initiative will create a unique train number which will be a national level identity for each train and will cover all the passenger carrying trains running in Indian railways network. 

Read more:  Trains get new numbers - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/lucknow/Trains-get-new-numbers/articleshow/7073585.cms#ixzz17gTiMtvy

No comments:

Post a Comment