Indian Railways may reduce travel time on Delhi-Howrah rail route by 2.5 hours

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Indian Railways is always working towards making the train journey better for the passengers. This time Indian Railways has come up with a plan to reduce the travel time on New Delhi-Howrah route by 2.5 hours. As a step to shorten the long train journeys, Indian Railways is set to cut the travel time between New Delhi and Howrah rail route by 2.5 hours and increase the train speed up to 160 kmph. 

Currently, the fastest and the shortest travel time on the 1,525km New Delhi-Howrah rail route is of Rajdhani express. It takes 17.5 hours to complete the journey via Bihar's Gaya. However, with the increased speed, the journey will be covered in less than 15 hours.

The initiative to reduce the travel time between the two stations comes under the Indian Railways ‘Mission Raftar.’ Mission Raftar aims to reduce the travel time between the busy destinations by passenger trains at 160 kmph. It is considered as the paradigm shift for rail network development. Earlier, the highest speed approved was 130 kmph. 

In order to implement Mission Raftar, Indian Railways will improve the tracks’ readiness for higher speed by fencing, implementation of latest technology used by European countries, Africa and China like overhead equipment modification (OEM) and automatic train protection on the route. 

The work for increasing speed up to 160 kmph along the New-Delhi-Howrah rail route has already been sanctioned. Just like the New Delhi-Howrah rail route, the officials plan to cut the travel time on the 1,483km long New Delhi-Mumbai rail route too. Railway authorities expect to reduce the travel time by atleast an hour. The Railways expects to complete the plan to ramp up the speed of trains on Delhi-Howrah route before September 2023.