Indian Railways Thread

[merlin]

when first started , Coromandel , one of the earliest Superfast trains, had only three stops Bhuvaneswar, vizag and Vijayawada with ongole/Khurda road as technical stops for pantry. It had distinct color and liveries. now it has 12 stops and still zips through long stretches and gets Block sections All clear for seven blocks.. Its fastest train on east cost as singha garu pointed out. Recently I noticed it has improved services , but nothing like rajdhani as it used to have in olden days. food is , of course not included in fare unlike rajdhani.
I think IR had many services in old days, not found now such as restaurant , library etc.

Lovely pantry service though, even if I travelled on the Coromandel just once to sample it. Rumour was that there were a lot of Railway employed Tam-Brams working in Calcutta and they ensured that it was fast and nothing got in its way. I travelled once in 1998 or so from Howrah to Madras. Not late by even 5 minutes, excellent pantry service, comfortable and fast.

[prashanth]

Southern Railway's trains running south and west have the worst coaches I have ever travelled. Apparently, all condemned coaches are being sent to Southern Railway and these people have been accepting them meekly.

ICF is in chennai isn't it?

[chaanakya]

Southern Railway's trains running south and west have the worst coaches I have ever travelled. Apparently, all condemned coaches are being sent to Southern Railway and these people have been accepting them meekly.

ICF is in chennai isn't it?

Yes it is , Perambur, Chennai. But that doesn't mean SR gets brand new coaches. What SSridhar is saying may be true as RMs are known to be partial to respective regions.

[Harish]

Woes of Chennai-Coimbatore Duranto

One look at the recently introduced non-stop Duronto Express trains, running between Chennai and Coimbatore, and pop comes in mind the adage: ‘Old wine in new bottle’. For, they are all run with old coaches — a blatant violation of railway norms that only new ones must be used.

The decision to use old coaches may have been taken in haste. Reliable sources claimed that the rakes sourced from Northern Railway were much worn out because of their constant use in the past.

When contacted, a senior official with the railways said the Duronto service was launched as part of the budget announcement for the current fiscal. “The inauguration might have been delayed for two years, roughly, if we had waited for new rakes.” {Is this an excuse ? How can the Government itself compromise the security of passengers and also charge exorbitantly for worn out coaches with non-working toilets, broken glass panes which are temporarily, dangerously and shabbily fixed etc. ?}

As things stand today, new coaches were likely to be added as and when they arrive, the official remarked.

Southern Railway's trains running south and west have the worst coaches I have ever travelled. Apparently, all condemned coaches are being sent to Southern Railway and these people have been accepting them meekly.

It depends on which train you take. The "prestigious" ones such as Pandian, Nellai, Vaigai etc will have superb, shiny new coaches. The other less prestigious routes will have older coaches. I have travelled often between Chennai and Tiruchi, Madurai and also between Chennai and Mumbai and I can assure you that the Mumbai route coaches are much worse than the intra-TN coaches, atleast the prestigious ones.

[starek]

Part 1: Tianjin – Beijing – Lhasa – Zhangmu – Kathmandu
December 22 – December 26, 2010
Part 2: Kathmandu – Lumbini – Sunauli – Nautanwa
January 3 – January 4, 2011
Part 3: Nautanwa – Gorakhpur – Lucknow – Agra – Delhi
January 4 – January 6
Part 4: Delhi – Mumbai
January 6 – January 8
Part 5: Mumbai – Goa – Bengaluru – Chennai
January 9 – January 12
Part 6: Chennai – Kanyakumari
January 12 – January 13
Part 7: Kanyakumari – Dharamshala
January 14 – January 17
Part 8: Dharamshala – Delhi
January 18 – January 19
Part 9: Delhi – Nalanda – Rajgir
January 19 – January 20
Part 10: Rajgir – Patna – Kolkata
January 20 – January 21
Part 11: Kolkata – Dhaka – Chittagong
January 22 – January 24
Part 12: Chittagong – Dhaka – Kuala Lumpur – Macau – Zhuhai
January 24 – January 27
Part 13: Zhuhai – Guangzhou – Zhuzhou – Hangzhou – Shanghai – Changzhou – Tianjin
January 27 – February 1

[manish]

Some disturbing news coming in from Kerala. At least down south women (including those in my family) used to feel relatively safe travelling around independently on night journeys. Wonder what's happening.
Another woman attacked in Kerala train

Hardly a week after a woman rail passenger was pushed out of a local train and allegedly raped, Railway Police have arrested a 23-year-old youth in another incident when he tried to misbehave with a young woman passenger on board the Thiruvananthapuram-Mangalore express.

The woman passenger was asleep on the top berth late on sunday night when she felt someone trying to embrace her. She screamed for help and the other passengers who were all asleep immediately woke up. The incident occurred as the train was naering ernakulam station.

The youth, who managed to escape, was found hiding inside a toilet and was arrested by the railway police force personnel. A case under sect 354 of IPC has been charged against him, railway police said.

The accused Antony Suresh, hailing from Kanyakumari, was produced before the Judicial First Class magistrate court here and remanded to 14 days judicial custody.

Good that the pr*&k was named and shamed. Serves him right.

[Sachin]

Some disturbing news coming in from Kerala. At least down south women (including those in my family) used to feel relatively safe travelling around independently on night journeys.

Hmm.. Kerala always had this problem of harassment or most commonly passing of lewd comments. My own relatives from the socialist republic have said that they feel much more comfortable in crowded cities in TN and Karnataka. The reason, people mind their own business instead of trying to act smart. In Kerala this bad attitude was also attributed to the strict compartmentalised society, which does not allow girls and boys to have much interactions.

Perhaps the origin of these ladies special compartments also could be to provide a much more comfortable travel to women, with men kept at a safe distance away. In the sad rape case which happened last week, they girl remained put in the ladies' compartment even when it was empty. The vagabond utilised the chance. At least some people (men and women) have now started thinking about doing away with these segragated coaches. Either reserving a bay or two in certain coaches, or having a condition that a man and woman can sit next to each other (like in any metorpolitan city) and travel is being thought off.

[chaanakya]

Sachin, these are aberration everywhere and perhaps it would be better not to generalise. I have both good and bad experiences to share from most parts of the country involving individuals from different walks of life and religions.
I notice here that both criminals belong to TN., that doesn't prove anything. Criminals are criminals.

[Gaurav_S]

Littering rail worker gets fine, night in jail

Central Railway General Manager Kul Bhushan on Sunday had the entire kitchen car staff of the Hatia-Lokmanya Tilak Terminus train placed under detention in Kurla just hours after he spotted used plastic tea cups being chucked out of the train's pantry car near Kasara.



It was only after one of the kitchen staff, Azhar Khan, 36, confessed it was he who threw the dirty cups out, that the rest, seven of them, were let off.

Khan spent a night in jail and was produced before a judge on Monday. He was released on paying a fine of Rs 100.

Central Railway's Mumbai division alone generates 20,000 kg of trash every day and often gets blamed by environmentalists for the heaps of plastic strewn around hills near Mumbai.

On Sunday around 2 pm, Bhushan was inspecting the tracks in the ghats in his special train when he saw a bunch of dirty tea cups land on the track.

Since trains slow down when negotiating the ghats, Bhushan got a clear view of the cups flying out of the pantry car.

The spot was not far from Kasara Railway Station. The staff was obviously chucking trash to create space for fresh supplies.

The railways spend lakhs of rupees every year creating awareness among passengers against littering. The CR general manager was obviously apalled that his own staff was being so callous.

The very next moment, his officers were on wireless with Senior Divisional Security Commandant P C Sinha at Kurla, the train's last station.

Bhushan's instructions were clear – detain the train's entire pantry car staff. He knew it would be difficult to extract a confession from the culprit.

The only hope was to build pressure on him by detaining his colleagues.

Over 105 km away and around one-and-a-half hours later, as Hatia-Lokmanya Tilak Terminus train chugged into Kurla Station, the pantry staff got a shock when they saw a Railway Protection Force (RPF) party waiting for them.

Initially, all eight of them said they had no idea who had thrown the tea cups out at Kasara. However, when they were told that they all could be arrested, bits of information began tumbling out.

Soon, realising that his colleagues would eventually tell on him, Khan confessed.

He was detained through the night at the RPF's Kurla post. On Monday morning, he was produced at the Railway Court at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.
The judge fined him Rs 100. Failure to pay the fine would have meant two days in jail. Khan paid the fine.

A senior officer, who was with Bhushan when the incident happened, said the pantry workers have been given detailed guidelines on waste disposal.

“Certain stations have been designated for off-loading trash. We will soon issue fresh orders. Anybody caught chucking stuff out of a train will be prosecuted,” he said.

When contacted, Bhushan said, “It is essential that the railway system is kept clean by employees as well as commuters.

Pantry personnel have been told that they can dispose of waste at designated places, and they cannot throw it out of trains.

This will be a deterrent and will encourage people to ensure railway premises, tracks, etc, are kept clean.”

[SSridhar]

A new corrosion-resistant alloy developed for Indian rail tracks

TOILET discharge into the open from passenger trains is perhaps unique to the Indian railway system. Apart from the highly undesirable environmental pollution it causes, it leads to severe corrosion of the rails and their fastenings as the toilet chutes are located almost directly above the rails. It is, in fact, a major cause of corrosion of the rails. This problem is not to be dismissed lightly because the economic cost of corrosion of rails (which, of course, includes normal environmental corrosion) in the Indian context is very significant.

Modification of the toilet discharge system by the Indian Railways, as announced by the Railways Minister a couple of years ago, by replacing the present system with green toilets or aircraft-style vacuum toilets, is certainly welcome, but that addresses only a part of the corrosion problem. Atmospheric corrosion of rails, particularly in coastal regions which accounts for a significant fraction of the Indian network, is also a serious issue requiring urgent attention.

A research paper published in the January 10 issue of Current Science details the development of a novel corrosion-resistant steel by a team of researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT-K), the Research Designs & Standards Organisation (RDSO) of the Indian Railways at Lucknow, the Research & Development Centre for Iron & Steel (RDCIS) of Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) at Ranchi, and the Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP). The team was led by the late R. Balasubramaniam, a materials science professor at IIT-K who became well known for unravelling the mystery behind the corrosion resistance of the 1,600-year-old iron pillar in Delhi. He found that the presence of phosphorus in the pillar helped in the formation of a passive film on the surface that provided the pillar with exceptional resistance to atmospheric corrosion. The researchers used the same principle of micro-alloying to arrive at an appropriate composition of alloying elements for the steel that could be used to make corrosion-resistant rails.

[kmc_chacko]

Soumya, who died after being attacked on a train

At 23, Soumya was the pivot of her family's present and future.

Her father had left them five years ago. Her mother who was sick couldn't afford to give up her job as a domestic helper. Her brother was a driver. And when Soumya was offered a job as a sales girl at a shopping mall in Kochi, she decided to abandon her course in hotel management.

So she boarded a train from Thrissur, after accepting the job on December 29 last year, and hoped she was headed into a world that would at the very least give her her due.

For one and a half months, she travelled once a week between her home and Kochi. On a Tuesday night, she was headed home to consider a marriage proposal. Fifteen minutes away from Shoranur, she looked up to see a 33-year-old man entering the Ladies Compartment that she was travelling in. There were no other passengers.

It was late at night, and the man tried to rob her. When she fought back, he pushed her out of the open door of the compartment. Then, near the railway tracks that had crisscrossed her routine, he raped her. After a few minutes, he abandoned her.

A passenger informed the train guard that he saw two people jump out of the train. The guard then informed the Vallathol Nagar Railway Station, and the staff there rescued Soumya who was unconscious. She was immediately rushed to Med College Hospital in Thrissur, as she had a deep wound in her head and was bleeding profusely.

After six days in Intensive Care, she died on Sunday. We meet her mother, Sumathi, in the home that Soumya loved returning to. "She had very big dreams. She used to say that she wanted to get a top job in a bank and she said she would buy a car for us," she recalls.

The man who raped her daughter has been arrested and is in remand till February 10.

After leaving Thrissur, we board the same train that Soumya used to travel on to get to work in Kochi. In a compartment reserved for women, I am one of two men. There's nobody else. No guard comes around on a security check.

Soumya's death made the headlines, but in compartments like this one, women must still fend for themselves.

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/soumy ... rain-84395

What is happening where is RPF ?

[kmc_chacko]

Some disturbing news coming in from Kerala. At least down south women (including those in my family) used to feel relatively safe travelling around independently on night journeys. Wonder what's happening.
Another woman attacked in Kerala train

Hardly a week after a woman rail passenger was pushed out of a local train and allegedly raped, Railway Police have arrested a 23-year-old youth in another incident when he tried to misbehave with a young woman passenger on board the Thiruvananthapuram-Mangalore express.

The woman passenger was asleep on the top berth late on sunday night when she felt someone trying to embrace her. She screamed for help and the other passengers who were all asleep immediately woke up. The incident occurred as the train was naering ernakulam station.

The youth, who managed to escape, was found hiding inside a toilet and was arrested by the railway police force personnel. A case under sect 354 of IPC has been charged against him, railway police said.

The accused Antony Suresh, hailing from Kanyakumari, was produced before the Judicial First Class magistrate court here and remanded to 14 days judicial custody.

Good that the pr*&k was named and shamed. Serves him right.

oops this is a second incident in week time

[rsingh]

Guys watch the travel blog posted by Starek. It is good except some weird comments. Easy to see how corruption is eating us. IR should be privatized ASAP. I fail to understand how they can keep such filthy stations and coaches. Is it too expensive to whitewash the places used by thousands? We can be jingos to death but we are loosing and loosing very fast.

[kmc_chacko]

IR should allow private parties to build & run the railway just like National Highways, otherwise we cann't build new lines with short span of time

[Purush]

Yeah, IR seems to be in a really miserable state wrt to infrastructure and cleanliness. Chipanda stations and trains look well maintained and clean despite heavy passenger use.

Forget about TFTA h&d boosting facilities..no reason why IR can't atleast keep the trains, tracks and platforms clean/functional. Truly disgusting state of affairs...typical sarkari system.

[Sachin]

Forget about TFTA h&d boosting facilities..no reason why IR can't atleast keep the trains, tracks and platforms clean/functional.

I feel now time has come (or rather over due) for IR to have some better means to get rid off the toilet systems in railway coaches. The old "hole on the floor" systems needs to go. If you ask me, one of the main reasons why people get the feeling that railway stations are dirty, is because of the lumps of $hit they find right there on the tracks (next to the platform). Then comes the various stuff which gets thrown out of the various coaches.

Step 1: At least have a feature in place that toilets etc. are shut out, when the train is standing at a station. But I am sure people would find some way to circumvent it. Main reason, the passengers themselves dont find it wrong to pi$$ or $hit when even though the train is standing at a station.
Step 2: Go for toilets, like the trains they have in Europe. Seems to be working fine. The only time when I found them clogged or not usable was during a journey on the GNER train in UK.

[Raghavendra]

^ mamata had promised vacuum toilets in her budget speech, what happened to them?

[rohiths]

^ mamata had promised vacuum toilets in her budget speech, what happened to them?

When did politicians keep their promises?

[krishnan]

^ mamata had promised vacuum toilets in her budget speech, what happened to them?

Got vaccumed

[svinayak]

The California High-Speed Rail station in Calif.., is seen in this

[Christopher Sidor]

Marvelous picture. This is a computer rendering of a proposed railway station. But this again leads to a problem. High-speed Passenger Rail service has never been economically. See the example of the Japanese bullet trains. High capital costs and depreciation kills it eventually.

[Purush]

Awesome luxury trains.
Well beyond the reach of mango abdul, but who said India doesn't have TFTA tourist trains?
Beats the packistan out of the chipanda rakes any day.

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1241933

[vic]

There was some talk about Railway line to Leh also through Himachal Pradesh. What happened?

http://www.liveindia.com/ladakh/05july08.html

July 06, 2008, In a major move to push tourism in the hill states and counter Chinese expansion in the Tibetan region, the Railways ministry has prepared a blueprint to set up an ambitious 480 kilometre Manali - Leh railway line link criss-crossing the treacherous mountains in Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir.

The project according to experts will cost over Rs 16,000 crore and the ministry is already preparing a detail survey plan for the project.

A top level government meeting took place in Delhi recently to discuss the survey and other modalities of the project. The distance, according to the plan, will be traversed in around ten hours.

A senior Railway Ministry official said, "A detailed survey plan for the proposed Manali-Leh railway line has been prepared and is under the active consideration of the Railway Board. The expenditure for the survey will be shared jointly by the Himachal Pradesh government and the centre."

http://www.himvani.com/news/2010/12/26/ ... ssion/9555

HimVani

Shimla (Dec 26): The Union Railway Ministry after examining the feasibility report for the proposed Bilaspur-Manali-Leh Railway line has forwarded the same to the Planning Commission of India for its approval. This was revealed by Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal on receipt of a letter from Union Minister of State for Railways E Ahamed, here today.

Dhumal said that the he had drawn the attention of the country towards the vital link of strategically important Bilaspur-Manali-Leh railway line with the national boundaries in Laddakh region keeping in view the communication upgradation by the neighboring country. He said that since the neighboring country had constructed all-weather half-a-dozen railway lines with the national border, which was a matter of great concern keeping in view the inadequate connectivity at the national boundaries.

The Chief Minister said that the proposed railway line was not only strategically important but would also help explore virgin region for tourism activities. He said that private parties had also offered to construct the railway line. He said that the 498-km-long all-weather broad gauge railway line was estimated to cost Rs 22,831 crore.

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1180579
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/rail- ... d/729758/0

Besides the proposal to construct a fresh railway line between Manali and Leh-Ladakh, Dhumal said on Sunday, the ministry was also actively considering conversion of narrow gauge Pathankot-Jogindernagar rail track into broad gauge and its further extension up to Mandi. The proposal is to link the Manali-Leh rail line with the Pathankot-Jogindernagar line at Mandi.


The pre-feasibility report pegs the cost of entire 498-kilometre all-weather broad gauge Bilaspur-Manali-Leh railway line at Rs 22,831 crore.

Equal to the cost of Gorky + Mig-29s, what would you prefer??????

[SBajwa]

The pre-feasibility report pegs the cost of entire 498-kilometre all-weather broad gauge Bilaspur-Manali-Leh railway line at Rs 22,831 crore.

Equal to the cost of Gorky + Mig-29s, what would you prefer??????

Train always over GORKY+Mig-29s. Because train will bring economy, prosperity as well as shorter supply lines to the front.

[suryag]

NEver a gorky train project's escalation cost stays in india unlike Gorky's

[Virupaksha]

Equal to the cost of Gorky + Mig-29s, what would you prefer??????

I would prefer getting money from corrupt cabals like, MMS + Karuna 2G over the two. Remember it pays for 7 such trains/ gorkys + migs.

ah! the so familiar trap, guns vs bread.

[SSridhar]

Yeah, IR seems to be in a really miserable state wrt to infrastructure and cleanliness.

Utterly true. Have been travelling extensively in Southern & Western Tamilnadu lately. The AC I Class compartments are themselves terrible with broken window panes, cockroaches and even rats, broken and ancient looking toilets, non-working lamps and overall lack of cleanliness. On wayside stations, people just boarded and occupied the alleys and passage near doors. Pathetic.

[SSridhar]

New oil-fired locomotive for Nilgiri Mountain Railways.
There have been a few hiccups with this project. Let's see how it goes now.

The first of the four new oil-fired steam engines for the Nilgiris Mountain Railway (NMR) arrived at the Mettupalayam railway yard on Saturday from the Golden Rock Workshop in Tiruchirapalli. The next one is expected to arrive by June.

This signals the beginning of the process to phase out the coal-fired vintage Swiss engines that took scores of passengers on the rack and pinion track to Coonoor and Udhagamandalam, covering 41.8 km, 108 curves, 16 tunnels and 250 bridges.

The route is the steepest in Asia with a maximum gradient of 8.33 per cent.

[Christopher Sidor]

Equal to the cost of Gorky + Mig-29s, what would you prefer??????

I would prefer getting money from corrupt cabals like, MMS + Karuna 2G over the two. Remember it pays for 7 such trains/ gorkys + migs.

ah! the so familiar trap, guns vs bread.

We have to think of the projects economic viability and the cost to exchequer.

This rail project would not be remunerative. To put it into perspective the cost of this project is 22,831 Crore. The estimated gross earnings of railways in the FY 2009-10 was 88,281 Crore. The expenditure of IR in the FY 2009-10 was 83,440 crore and is expected to be 87,100 crore in FY 2010-11. So basically this Shimla-Leh railway project is going to be 1/4th size of the gross earnings of IR. I grant you that the entire money will not go out in a year but it will be a multi-year project or a project lasting at least a decade. But it still shows the true financial scope of the project. Add to this the cost of keeping the line open during heavy rainfall.

It would be better if we could build a 4 lane all weather expressway from Chandigarh to Leh on the lines of Ahmedabad-Vadodara NE1 or Bombay-Pune Expressway or better still Delhi-Gurgaon 22 km NH-8 section.
A branch of the same road can be extended to Shimla. Once this road link is ready then we should go ahead and link leh with a railway line. The defense of our borders depends on roads and airbases.

[chackojoseph]

Indian Railway Budget 2011

Senior Citizens get a good deal in Indian Railway Budget 2011 – 2012

[Christopher Sidor]

One thing that disappointed in this budget was the absolute silence on the leh-himachal rail link. I know that this rail link is uneconomical from day one, but it would be better if some clarity is shown on this project.

One noteworthy thing was the connectivity to manipur was in its final stages. It should be helpful to us if this were extended to nagaland, mizoram, shillong and most important of all to Arunachal. We need to augment our rail and road capability in North east significantly.

[Singha]

I dont think IR had made AC-1 compartments since the mid 80s when I travelled followed by a long gap till 2004...nothing had changed and things had just got old and broken in AC-1 class.

a big shame imo.

[Sarma]

Singha, exactly my thoughts on the AC-1 compartment. During a recent trip to India, I was forced to book tickets on AC First Class coach on Gautami Express (Hyderabad-Kakinada) as tickets on all other classes were sold out. I was traveling along with my parents, and they were both more disappointed in the amenities than I was. AC F-1 coach was a rickety old one, at least 20 years old I reckon, and the only thing unique was the coupe and the greater privacy.

I think all this tamasha of not increasing passenger fares is just that. Indians are willing to pay higher fares for better amenities and higher quality service. Anyways, Railways has found a backdoor to extracting greater fares: superfast designation for a train, Tatkal, booking fees, etc.

[Singha]

a lot of tatkal quota is sold in black market by agents with inside contacts.

IR is like Bata canvas keds, or duckback hot water bottles...the world has changed, india has changed, almost everything has changed...but they continue the same way

[joshvajohn]

Mamata has 'hijacked' rail ministry-Says Jayalalithaa
http://www.topnews.in/mamata-has-hijack ... aa-2315198

AIADMK general secretary J Jayalalithaa said Mamata Banerjee’s focus on West Bengal with the assembly elections on her mind was nothing but an instance of a national resource being hijacked to serve local political ends. Predictably, she has announced major projects for Nandigram and Singur, where she had launched a successful battle against the West Bengal government’s land acquisition some years ago, Jayalalithaa said the rail budget was pro-people to the extent that there was no hike in passenger fares or freight rates.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/Rail-budg ... 66838.aspx



Rail budget disappointing: Naveen Patnaik
http://www.sify.com/news/rail-budget-di ... ciaia.html

[kmc_chacko]

I expected lot from Mamata Banerjee.

IR Ministry should think and should not encourage political agenda in IR's budget. Our Ex-IR Minister Mr. Laluji fooled us for 5 years with his colourful words now it seems the is for Mamataji's.

They should have increased the passenger fare by atleast 10% and should have invested it for laying new lines, for speed up the doubling of tracks, electrification, guage conversion and for improving the compartments present condition.

[Aditya_V]

IIR Ministry should think and should not encourage political agenda in IR's budget. Our Ex-IR Minister Mr. Laluji fooled us for 5 years with his colourful words now it seems the is for Mamataji's.

The fooled us was the Media, I had fought with my Sister, other family members, strangers on trains, in the Middle East et all on how railways can't be turned around overnight and Financial Health of Railways cannot be improved by not increasing fares for Years together while costs keep going up.

But how could Media be wrong, Harvard be wrong, IIM be wrong! Then facts come out, everybody has fergotton how they argued for Lallu, truly Indians have short memories.

[Vasu]

I think Harvard University and IIM Ahmedabad did it more for the media exposure than anything else.

Financial Management of even one small zone of the IR can be a PHD subject in itself, meaning its way more complicated and serious than one minister allowing an IAS Officer to take all the decisions and show huge operating profits all of a sudden.

Even with this budget from Mamataa 'Ban Her'jee, the fares are unchanged. She's hurt even the current revenue sources such as booking fees. Apart from keeping the fares untouched and tomtomming it as a great people's budget, another common theme of the budgets have been these grand capital expenditure announcements, such as setting up factories in politically important regions. The Indian Railway Finance Corporation must be doing a good job then to be able to raise all these funds from the markets.

[somnath]

The Indian Railway Finance Corporation must be doing a good job then to be able to raise all these funds from the markets.

IRFC has the easiest job in the world - all its debt is (quasi) g'teed by the Govt of India, as IRFC's only job is to raise debt funding for IR!

[ramana]

This Frontline article combines the favorite subjects of some members:

Toilets, Railways and Metallurgy!

Steeling Rails