Rail minister flags off time-tabled freight train

Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu on Wednesday flagged off an inaugural time-tabled container train named ‘Cargo Express’ between Domestic Container Terminal (Okhla) here and Bengaluru.

The ministry also launched an integrated social media platform (Facebook and Twitter) for redressal of grievances, a policy allowing differently-abled persons to avail concessions while traveling alone and liberalised ‘Comprehensive Parcel Leasing Policy’ (CLIP).

“Typically, (people would earlier keep guessing) when will the goods train reach... you required an astrologer  and needed to be lucky... now we are sure it will reach  in particular time.

“We are taking responsibility and this is going to reduce the turn around time by almost half,” Prabhu said during the event held at Rail Bhawan where he launched the service via video conferencing.

Minister of State for Railways Manoj Sinha was also present during the event.

Following budgetary announcements in this regard, Railways held consultations with Container Train Operators and accordingly, two pairs of time-tabled trains have been proposed by Container Corporation of India (Concor) to start with between Delhi-Bengaluru (2,278 km) and Delhi-Chennai (2,160 km).