New Delhi: Aiming to serve the twin objectives of catering to the Holi rush and earning additional revenue, the cash-strapped railways will next week run two Premium trains with costlier tickets for Mumbai and Jammu.
Bookings for the Premium trains, which are to be pressed into service before Holi, will start from March 10, said a senior railway ministry official.
Tariff for these trains will be determined by demand with the aim being to boost revenues. Tickets for premium trains can only be booked online on the IRCTC website.
The Delhi-Mumbai Premium Express will run for two days on March 14 and 16 while the Delhi-Jammu Premium train will be pressed into service on three days, March 14, 16 and 21.
For the return leg, the Mumbai-Delhi Premium Express will be available on March 15 and 17 and the Jammu-Delhi Premium Express will run on March 15, 17 and 22.
Tickets for the Premium trains can be only booked as per the availability as no waitlisted tickets will be issued for these, said the official.
Taking a cue from the airlines, railways decided to run Premium trains on the dynamic fare system for busy routes.
Before Christmas last year, railways had run a Premium train to Mumbai on an experimental basis. The response to that was good as the train was booked to capacity and fares jumped between 30 to 35 per cent.
Encouraged by that, railways announced in this year`s Rail Budget that it would run such trains on 17 busy routes.
"The fare for Premium trains is likely to increase depending on the demand intensity," said the official.
