Looking at the vacation mood, the Central Railway has increased the number of services operated by them on the Matheran trains. This started today. In 2021-22, the CR ferried 3.06 lakh passengers on their toy train. On May 20, the CR authorities increased the services from 16 to 20 until May 31.
Sources in the railways said that usually during monsoon they do not operate the toy train as Matheran has a hilly terrain. “We started operating more shuttle services on Matheran – Aman Lodge section from May 20 until May 31. We will be adding 4 more services on weekdays from Monday to Friday,” said Shivaji Sutar, Chief PRO, Central Railway.
On Weekends they will continue to run 20 services on Saturdays and Sundays. During weekdays the first train will depart Matheran at 8.15 am and will take 18 minutes to reach Aman Lodge. Likewise, it will depart at 8.40 am from Aman Lodge and reach Matheran at 8.58 am. The last toy train service from Matheran is at 5.10 pm and from Aman Lodge, it is at 5.35 pm.
The CR authorities have ferried more than 3.06 lakh passengers from 2021 to 22 in Matheran which is the nearest and the most popular tourist destination for Mumbaikars. The Central Railway with its shuttle services for passengers between Aman Lodge and Matheran has been instrumental in popularizing this place as a major tourist destination. They also transported 42,613 packages during the year 2021-22 with a total of 16 services on weekdays and 20 services on weekends between Aman Lodge and Matheran.
This has resulted in fetching the revenue of Rs.1.82 crore during the period from April-2021 to March-2022. This includes passenger earnings of Rs.1.78 crore and parcel earnings of Rs.3.29 lakh. The winter vacation is the most appropriate season for passengers travelling to Matheran. The month November-2021 tops the chart with passenger earnings of Rs.27.65 lakh carrying 42,021 passengers closely followed by the month December-2021 with passenger earnings of Rs. 27.11 lakh carrying 43,500 passengers.
The Central Railway is carrying out improvement works on the entire Neral-Matheran 21 km stretch that they expect to complete in the coming months.
