Plea to improve Shatabdi Express

Sir,

After the electrification was completed, I had recently visited the Railway Station to drop my relative boarding Shatabdi Express. But I was unhappy to see the train in a state of non-standardised condition, even though it is ISO 9001-2000 certified train.

I request the Railway authorities to look into it and provide a solution to these problems:

1. Long delay in opening the doors of the train: The maintenance team of the train create a long delay in opening the doors of the train due to maintenance works. The doors are opened when it is only five minutes for departure. It is learnt that this delay occurs only at Mysuru Station but not at Chennai, where the doors are opened half -an-hour before departure from that end.
2. Installation of one default generator coach: Premium trains like Shatabdi and Rajdhani Express have two operating generator, luggage and break coaches (EOGs) in order to maintain stable current across the A/C coaches of the train. But this Shatabdi Express had only one EOG under operation and the other was standalone due to some default. Due to this, one EOG was maintaining electricity needs for all 14 coaches. Due to this, the lights inside the coaches were quite dull.
3. Use and mixing of some old LHB cosmopolitan coaches in the train: We all know that at present Mysuru is a city having a population of 1.014 million. But even nowadays I could see that some old (about 9 years) shiny silver LHB coaches (cosmopolitan type) were mixed along with new uniform blue LHB coaches. I request the Railways to replace these old coaches with the new uniform blue coloured ones so as to maintain the uniformity and to give a standard look. Sometimes yellow colour EOG rake of double decker trains are attached to it.
4. Increase speed of the train and shifting of modern Anubhuti coach to the middle: Recently the electrified line was opened and slowly the clans of Chittaranjan (the e-locos) are invading Mysuru but still there is no improvement in the speed of Shatabdi Express. It still runs at a speed of 65kmph between Mysuru and Bengaluru. I request the authorities to increase the speed of the train at least between 110-120kmph to drastically reduce the travel time between the two cities.

I request the Railways to take these issues seriously because Mysuru Shatabdi is not an ordinary train anymore. It is one of the first batch of five new Shatabdi Express trains introduced in the country and the first Shatabdi in Southern India. By the next year the train would also celebrate 25 years of its operation [first service in 1994].

Hence, as a concerned citizen, I urge the Railways to provide special attention to the train and make it look modern and uniform as ever.

– Shreyas K. Mahesh, Mysuru, 20.4.2018

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