Central Railways starts 102 every week to Matheran

Representation pic

Pulling out all the stops, the Central Railway (CR) has revived its services to Matheran like never before to run 102 services every week, with an average of 17 to 22 daily, starting Friday. "Respecting the demand of tourists and residents of Matheran, and given the rising popularity, we have decided to run more services on the Neral-Matheran line," a senior official said.

The six-coach trains will run a total of 17 services on Mondays, 14 between Tuesdays and Thursdays, 21 on Fridays and 22 on Saturdays and Sundays. An elaborate timetable has been worked out for the same. Though they are facing losses, the railways have invested about R18 crore for upgrading the line. New locomotives are also being manufactured at the Parel workshop to improve services. They have also put up gabion walls and upgraded the old locomotives with digitised controls, air brakes and double the horsepower.

The trains, previously running on 306 HP, will now run on 650 HP. The line, which opened in 1907, is already in the tentative UNESCO world heritage list. The renewed services come after CR announced in November 2017 that for the first time in its 110-year history, they were re-laying the entire stretch of railway tracks between Neral and Matheran, upgrading locomotives and redrafting safety parameters to revive and start full services by March.

Illustration/Ravi Jadhav

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