Close on the heels of hundreds of passengers holding a protest meeting on Monday at the Ernakulam Town railway station demanding a new MEMU train on the Kollam-Kottayam-Ernakulam route during peak hours and addition of more coaches in crammed trains like Palaruvi Express on the route, the Railways decided on Tuesday to add a sleeper coach and three general coaches to the train bearing numbers 16791 and 16792, from August 14.
This will take the total number of coaches in the train to 18. Passengers had been demanding this ever since the Commissioner of Railway Safety permitted trains having 18 coaches to operate in the Punalur-Shengottai corridor. Passenger associations have demanded more general coaches in other short- and long-distance trains as well, including the Guruvayur-Madurai Express (train number 16327 and 16328), since MEMU and other passenger trains can operate with 18 coaches and express trains with 24 coaches.
Passenger associations like Friends on Rails, All Kerala Railway Users’ Association, and Thrissur Railway Passengers’ Association have for years been demanding augmenting of general coaches in trains, citing incidents of people fainting in jam-packed trains, unable to breathe properly, including earlier this week.
Railway sources hoped that more general coaches would be allotted to trains operating in Kerala, considering that orders had been placed for 4,000 such coaches for the coming year to make up for the shortfall in the number of coaches pan India.
