Railways

It is the beginning of a long weekend. You leave your office at 7 pm in Electronics City with a bid to catch the 9 pm train at KR Puram railway station. The cab picks you up right on time and you zip on the elevated highway to reach silk board in 15 minutes. However, there is a huge pile up at Silk Board and you are forced to spend 20 minutes at this junction. It is 7.35 pm and you start getting worried as to whether you would be able to reach the station on time. Moreover, the train…

Centralised numbers released by Indian Railways for citizens' convenience       9760534983 : TTI, Reservation & Meals 9760500000 : cleaning 9760534057 : problem in coach 9760534060 : electricity problems 9920142151 : enquiry problems 9760534063 : RPF & Security 9760534069 : drinking water arrangement 9760534073 : medical   Please use these numbers and give the feedback on how useful you found them during/before/after your journey.   Clarification from my friend: "This was a news item  in India rail info.com site which normally is authentic. However after I managed to contact two of the 9760 series numbers I unearthed the real problem. Apparently it is the set of numbers of Moradabad division…

Litter along the railway tracks I travelled from Bangalore to Delhi and all along the tracks, I found vast quantities of plastic and other litter, thrrown not only by careless passengers, but, to my horror, dumped by Railway employees, especially catering contractors.  Does Indian Railways not believe that this is our country, and in cleanliness?  Shame, Indian Railways...you truly must "clean up your act"!  Disposal of waste must be (and is not) an essential part of travelling.

This is the beeline of vehicles on Varthur Main Road near Kundalahalli Gate. Trains have the capacity to take some part of this traffic off the road. Pic: Shree D N Vaidyanathan Narayanan works in a company in Whitefield. He takes the 9.05 am Namma Metro service from Ulsoor and reaches Byappanahalli Metro station at 9.14 am. Then he quickly moves towards the Baiyappanahalli Railway Station via the newly built footbridge, and reaches the station at 9.17 am. He waits for the Arakkonam train that comes in between 9.20 am to 9.30 am. He reaches the informal train stop behind…

It was very nice indeed to use the new escalator in use at the City Railway Station, yesterday. This escalator is on the side opposite the underground passage, and takes visitors up to the overbridge spanning all the platforms.   Several escalators are also under construction at some of the platforms. Though large pieces of luggage cannot be taken on them, strolleys and smaller bags can be comfortably taken. This will ease the lot of several visitors and passengers at the station.   There are also lifts at the underground passage area, but at least one of them was not…

Any old Bangalorean would be surprised to see the way Whitefield has grown beyond imagination. However, the infrastructure in the area hasn't seen so much improvement. If you thought nobody bothers about this, you are wrong. Whitefield residents want to make a difference by asking the government agencies about what they want. They have already requested a stop for more trains that pass Whitefield railway station. Bruhat Whitefield Residential Community Association (BWRCA) members have submitted a memorandum to the Railway Divisional manager, in this regard. P S Narayanan, the Vice-president of Nitesh Forest Hills Apartment Owners Welfare Association, took the…

Recently, I had an occasion to travel on a couple of very long journeys (Bangalore to Guwahati and back, and Bangalore to Ahmedabad and back). The Indian Railways had just raised the price of all food and beverages sold on the trains. I'll take one example, where I found that vendors are resorting to unethical practices, and cheating passengers of their money. We were told that tea and coffee were now to cost Rs.10, and though we grumbled, there is really no alternative to the vendors on the train, and we paid up. We were surprised, the next day, to…

Did you know that so many amenities exist in the Bangalore City Railway Station? Here is the list of amenities provided at the City Railway Station. Such things as, "Comesum is a 24hr multi cuisine food plaza located near the entrance to the foot over bridge. Passengers can order food from here to be delivered to their respective coaches by calling 56904478."   and "RETIRING ROOMS AND DORMITORIES - These are located on the first and second floors of the station building, above platform 1.There are 27 rooms in all, including 8 AC rooms, 18 Non-AC rooms and 1 room…

Have you ever travelled from Dr Rajkumar Road underpass via Okalipuram to reach City Central Railway station in Bangalore? If you have, you will agree that it takes nothing less than 45 minutes to one hour to cross the 1.5 kms road. You have to beat heavy traffic jams on the uphill road burning precious fuel, avoid jaywalking people, vehicles criss-crossing at intersections, potholed roads and the heavy traffic load on the road. The long-awaited project of creating an underpass, rail over-bridge at the two Okalipuram railway tracks and the 8-lane corridor is proposed to take off in December 2013.…

Gnanabharati Layout was formed by BDA many years ago to the north of the Bangalore-Mysore rail tracks, adjacent to the Bangalore University Campus. Yet, to this day, the Layout lacks proper vehicular access. Residents have to use the existing Level Crossing No 10 on the road to Dubhashipalya from Mysore Road - at Km 14 on State Highway 17.Residents of the Layout have been fighting a long and hard battle with the BDA and BBMP to obtain even basic amenities such as metalled roads, street lights, facilities for water and sewage over the past  twelve years. Parts of the Layout…