Bharat Rakshak

chetak wrote:Hope that you specifically did appreciate the attender's role in the tweets

Javee wrote:

chetak wrote:Hope that you specifically did appreciate the attender's role in the tweets

Thanks, I did after your reminder here

Javee wrote:

chetak wrote:Hope that you specifically did appreciate the attender's role in the tweets

Thanks, I did after your reminder here

Prasad wrote:So that is what all those car-carrier coaches were lying around at Arakonam!

Any reply from the Ministry of Railways?

The Union cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi today approved an investment of Rs 10,736 crore in five railway projects involving decongestion of the existing network, through doubling and tripling of existing lines.

"Most of these lines are over-saturated with a capacity utilisation of more than 100 per cent. The doubling and tripling projects would benefit multiple states including Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh," rail minister Suresh Prabhu said.

He added the funds for implementing the projects would be sourced through a combination of Gross Budgetary Support (GBS) from the finance ministry and Extra Budgetary Resources (EBR). "Most of these projects would be completed in a period of three to five years or even before that," Prabhu said.

The projects include doubling of the 467-kilometer Pune-Miraj-Londa line in Maharashtra at a cost of Rs 3,627 crore; doubling of 116-Km Surendranagar-Rajkot project in Gujarat at a cost of Rs 1,002 crore; and doubling of 180-Km Roza-Sitapur-Burhwal broad gauge single line in Uttar Pradesh at an estimated cost of Rs 1,295 crore.

Moradabad: The first trial run of Spanish-built Talgo train will be held on theBareilly-Moradabad rail routein Uttar Pradesh on May 29.

The first Talgo train trial will be conducted at a maximum speed of 115 km per hour for oscillation test.

The next trials of the Talgo trains, which are capable of hitting a maximum speed of 200 km per hour, will be conducted on Mathura-Palwal corridor and Delhi-Mumbai corridor.

Railways launch RO-RO service to attract more loadings from Bihta Freight Terminal under Danapur Division

Railways today launched a new service ‘Ro-Ro’ to carry loaded trucks on goods train in a bid to attract more loadings and reduce carbon emission.

Railway minister Suresh Prabhu on Wednesday inaugurated the ‘Roll-on Roll-off’ (RO-RO) service through remote from New Delhi for the heavy vehicles at a function held at Bihta freight terminal under Danapur division of East Central Railway (ECR) and also Roll-on Roll-off (RO-RO) service was launched across the Digha rail bridge between Bihta and Turki stations in Bihar.
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[T]he freight charge for carrying a loaded truck up to 15 tonnes between Bihta and Turki terminals has been fixed at Rs 4,000. For an empty truck, railways would charge Rs 2,650. However, a sum of Rs 200 will be charged for every extra tonne of freight.
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Under the scheme, loaded trucks would be moved on the flat rakes to avoid congestion on roads across Ganges. To start with, this service is being introduced from Bihta to Turki station in Muzaffarpur district covering a distance of 88 kms.

In a rake, approximately 44 loaded/ empty trucks will be moved. A rake will perform 3 trips per day.

“We want to get back the freight we lost to roads,” Prabhu added.

Besides sand, stones can also be transported using the RO-RO service. Railways will extend the service to to cover more commodities and destinations in future.

saip wrote:What is this silly rule about no more than 6 bookings in a month (changed from 10) per account?

Sachin wrote:

saip wrote:What is this silly rule about no more than 6 bookings in a month (changed from 10) per account?

The original intention was to deny the touts the chance to book unlimited tickets. The touts then tried to create multiple IDs to byepass the system. But in most cases all the IDs had the same e-mail ID or address . IRCTC did some analysis on the user database and blocked the IDs having the same e-mail ID and address .

Four decades after the first Rajdhani Express made food a compulsory facility of premium train travel in India, passengers are finally going to get the choice to not eat railway food — and not pay for it either — served on such trains.
June 15 onwards, Railways will start the much-awaited trial in which passengers can opt out of meals while booking tickets of Rajdhanis and Shatabdis.
If the passenger chooses not to eat, he/she will not have to pay either. This means paying around Rs 300 less — the catering charges levied by Railways for serving food. For trains running longer distances, catering charges are higher. The rates are different for different classes as well.
To begin with, the 45-day trial will be carried out on the Patna Rajdhani, the Delhi-Mumbai August Kranti Rajdhani, the Pune-Secunderabad Shatabdi and the Howrah-Puri Shatabdi. But officials are certain that the trial is a mere formality. The element of “freedom”, they said, will be received positively by passengers.
Complaints over food constitute majority of the negative feedback from Railway passengers. Earlier, food served on Rajdhani used to be its USP. But over the years, there has been a rise in customer complaints over quality and quantity.

The Railway Ministry has issued the policy directive and the software enabling this choice into the ticketing system has also been tested. This is how it works: while booking tickets on the IRCTC portal, the website shows a popup that asks whether the passenger would like to opt out of the meals. Selecting ‘yes’ means the payable ticket price gets reduced after the catering charges are excluded. For tickets issued at counters, the onus lies on booking officials and other staff to tell people that such an option is now available. “We will have to keep telling people till it becomes common knowledge,” said a senior official. Officials estimate that once passengers opt out of meals, they would use the huge number of e-catering options available on the website or on designated phone numbers. Third party vendors — several well-known brands have already signed up — will deliver food in the compartments. Once a passenger chooses to opt out, she cannot change the decision during the journey. This is because based on the choices, the caterer will load the required amount of food in the train. It was also proposed that if a passenger changes her mind during the journey, she could be charged around 20 per cent over and above the catering charges for availing the facility. But in the final directive, that provision has not been included.

chetak wrote:^^^^^^^

aren't the big airline ticketing systems world wide running on fortran systems hosted on jurrassic park vintage hardware systems, just like the back end of all major credit card companies??

no one is talking of fixing these systems, because they are extremely robust and they almost never break.

nileshjr wrote:^^ True. They are frequently updated. Those mainframes are designed in such a way that before you update HW/SW, the new one starts and takes over the job and Then only you remove the old one. There are examples of Main frame systems which have never been rebooted in 4-5 decades, but obviously are kept updated both in SW and HW, is what I read once somewhere. COBOL is still used in IBM/Accenture for mainframe programming.

First phase of Spanish high-speed train trials to begin on May 28

chetak wrote:^^^^^^^

aren't the big airline ticketing systems world wide running on fortran systems hosted on jurrassic park vintage hardware systems, just like the back end of all major credit card companies??

no one is talking of fixing these systems, because they are extremely robust and they almost never break.

Singha wrote:imo their entire system needs a clean sheet rearchitecture, having been done in mid 80s around 30 years ago and with bolt on fixes since then. I think siemens info systems tried once and failed to make headway or maybe some other co - not sure of the name.