Asks Sadananda Gowda not to shift train route to Moradabad run by Northern Railway

Amid reports that the starting point of the proposed double-decker train to New Delhi might be shifted from Lucknow to Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday wrote to Railway Minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda, urging him not to shelve the original plan of running the train from the state capital.

According to official sources, the Chief Minister intervened after reports that the North-Eastern Railway (NER) had asked the Railway Board to give the train to Northern Railway (NR) for operation citing prevailing pressure on the Lucknow-Delhi route. Currently, the NER runs trains via Kanpur, Aligarh and Bareilly.

Both the NER and the NR have offices of divisional railway managers in Lucknow. While the main Charbagh station is run by the NR, the Lucknow junction and other stations come under the NER. The NR is reportedly planning to operate the train between Moradabad and New Delhi as it was in-charge of both the divisions and would find it easier to operate.

The NER completed the speed trial of the double-decker train four months ago. The second, the oscillation trial, is awaited while the train has been parked at the Gomti Nagar station for the past three months. The oscillation trial is to be done by the Research Design and Standards Organisation following the green signal from the Chief Commissioner, Railway Safety as well as heads of the NE and NER Railways.

The Railway Board would find it hard to neglect the ambitious project as it had the backing of the Chief Minister, said official sources.

The plan for the Lucknow-Delhi train was to run it as “reverse Shatabdi” by scrapping the Gomti Express, which runs between the two capitals in the morning and has a poor punctuality track record.