“To handle Diwali & Chhath rush, 349 special train trips added from NCR with 1.76 lakh seats. Railway boost security & crowd control at stations.”

Northern Railway is running special festive trains in the National Capital Region from October 15 to 27 to prepare for a lot of people traveling for Diwali and Chhath Puja. There are 349 journeys planned at first, but there are also more unreserved trains that can run on short notice if the crowds get bigger.

Ashok Kumar Verma, the General Manager of Northern Railway, said that this year there are more festival trains than last year’s 3,836 journeys. The current itinerary includes 4,718 trips until November 30. Both special and regular trains now have extra coaches, which means there are 270,532 seats available, 176,400 of which are for public ticket holders.

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Most of the special trains, roughly 80%, are going east so that people may get home for Diwali and Chhath Puja. Patna, Samastipur, Gaya, Bhagalpur, and Darbhanga in Bihar, as well as Dhanbad in Jharkhand, are some of the most important routes. All tickets are said to be selling out swiftly, therefore officials have set aside about 12 rakes at New Delhi, Anand Vihar Terminal, and Old Delhi stations.

There have been a number of measures put in place to control crowds and keep passengers safe:

-Permanent holding space on the Ajmeri Gate side of the New Delhi Railway Station

-Temporary holding spaces at the Anand Vihar Terminal and Shakur Basti stations

-Deployment of 120 senior officers and 2,100 RPF personnel

-Extra staff: 126 people to order tickets, 29 people to check reservations, and 45 people to check tickets

-35 digital walkie-talkies for talking to each other

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-Main control room at the Northern Railway headquarters and smaller control rooms at stations

To cut down on wait times for regular travelers, pre-printed tickets have been set up at key stations in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Jharkhand. The railway administration has promised that travel will go smoothly during the holiday season.