Indian Railways issues timings of 30 special trains to be run with effect from May 12

After announcing the gradual operation of passenger trains amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Indian Railways has issued the timings of 30 special trains which will run from May 12 onwards.

Out of the 30 special trains, 15  will start from New Delhi railway station, then 15 will leave for New Delhi from other cities. The train coming from Howrah to New Delhi will start at 5:00 pm. Apart from this, the train coming from Patna to New Delhi is at 7.20 pm and the trains coming from Delhi to Dibrugarh will be at 4.45 pm. Furthermore, the trains coming from Bangalore to Delhi will be at 8:30 pm.  

Read the full list here - 

The booking will only be through the official website and no tickets will be available at the railway counter. These trains will not have general bogies and not all seats will be available for booking, only a few seats can be booked.

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Railways to begin operations from May 12

In a major announcement, the Indian Railways said it plans to gradually restart passenger train operations from May 12, initially with 15 pair of trains (30 return journeys). These trains will be run as special trains from New Delhi Station connecting Dibrugarh, Agartala, Howrah, Patna, Bilaspur, Ranchi, Bhubaneswar, Secunderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Madgaon, Mumbai Central, Ahmedabad and Jammu Tawi. 

In a statement, the Ministry of Railways said the state-run transporter shall start more special services on new routes, based on the available coaches after reserving 20,000 coaches for COVID-19 care centres and an adequate number of coaches being reserved to enable operation of up to 300 trains every day as “Shramik Special” for stranded migrants.

Booking for reservation on these trains will start at 4 pm on Monday and will be available only on the IRCTC website. However, ticket booking counters at the railway stations will remain shut and no counter tickets (including platform tickets) will be issued. Only passengers with valid confirmed tickets will be allowed to enter the railway stations.

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