Aiming at facilitating passengers to book meals of their choice in trains, e-catering service is now available in more than 1,500 trains across the country. Besides serving in trains, the e-catering service, aptly named as ‘Food on Track’, has also been extended to some major stations.
Undertaken by the Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), the railways catering arm, the e-catering service was initially started with 28 non-pantry car trains on a pilot basis. It was a Railway Budget 2015-16 proposal to provide passengers with the e-catering option and the service is now available in 1,516 trains, said a senior Railway Ministry official. “Encouraged by the response, we have now extended the service in stations also on a pilot basis,” the official said.
The station-based e-catering has been made available at 45 major stations. As per the scheme, passengers would be allowed to order food of their choice from leading private caterers at stations, including New Delhi, Old Delhi, Anand Vihar and Nizamuddin.
In the first phase, 45 stations covered under the scheme include Mumbai Central, Pune, Howrah, Sealdah, Guwahati, New Jalpaiguri, Patna, Bhubaneshwar, Visakhapatnam, Mugalsarai, Kanpur Central, Lucknow, Varanasi, Jaipur, Bilaspur, Kharagpur, Allahabad, Gorakhpur, Amritsar and Chandigarh.