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Rail association seeks renaming of trains

By Staff Correspondent

DIBRUGARH, Oct 3 - The district committee of the Assam Rail Passengers� Association has demanded renaming of the Chandigarh-Dibrugarh Express and the Amritsar-Dibrugarh Express as the �Tea City Express� and the �Swarna Mandir Express�, respectively.

The office-bearers of the committee met the Tinsukia-based Divisional Railway Manager (DRM) at his office and discussed various issues relating to the improvement of the railway services in the region. The committee submitted two memoranda to the DRM.

In the first memorandum, the committee raised the issue of renaming the trains. The memorandum said that in order to highlight Dibrugarh�s heritage as the largest tea producing region in the country and also at the same time, the spiritual heritage of India represented by the holy Swarna Mandir (the Golden Temple of Amritsar), naming of the trains were felt necessary.

It may be mentioned here that, trains in India are normally named highlighting cultural, geographical or other importance of a particular place.

In the second memorandum, the committee urged the DRM to take steps to introduce sub-urban services in Dibrugarh by running more trains from the historic Dibrugarh town station. The committee also urged the DRM to extend the Dangari-Tinsukia passenger train up to Dibrugarh town, besides introduction of the third pair of passenger trains between Ledo and Dibrugarh which existed in the meter-gauge era of rail operations.

The memorandum also requested the NF Railway authorities to revise the timings of the existing passenger trains plying between Ledo and Dibrugarh town.

The DRM reportedly gave a patient hearing to the office-bearers of the committee, who met him and informed that the NF Railway authorities have taken steps for introduction of Diesel Electrical Multiple Unit (DEMU) services in Tinsukia division in February.

�With the introduction of DEMU services, the passenger train services in the division will improve, besides helping the NF Railway to recover some portion of the loss it has been incurring from passenger train services,� the DRM said.

It may be mentioned here that the Assam Rail Passengers� Association has been demanding introduction of sub-urban train services in Guwahati and Dibrugarh since 2006. As the DEMU train has engines on both sides, reversing of engine at the originating and terminating stations is not necessitated and at the same time the operation cost of such trains is much less in comparison to the conventional trains.

Further, Ramen Sengupta, the president of the Dibrugarh district committee of the Assam Rail Passengers� Association, urged both the State Government and the NF Railway authorities to immediately repair the damaged road to the Dibrugarh (Banipur) station.

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