The Central and Western Railways will be running 78 additional special trains for Ganpati festival to cater the possible rush to Konkan. These will begin running from first week of September and reservation for booking tickets shall start this week itself.
For instance, the Central Railway will run 40 additional Ganapati Festival Specials. This is in addition to 72 festival specials that were already announced. These trains will depart from Mumbai before the festival and from Konkan after Ganesh Chaturti. Some of these trains include Mumbai-Sawantwadi Road special that will run 2 services departing at 1.10pm from September 7.
Other trains include Panvel-Sawantwadi Road special (4 services), Lokmanya Tilak Terminus-Madgaon special (6 services), Lokmanya Tilak Terminus-Kudal special (6 services), Panvel-Kudal special (6 services) etc. on the Central Railway. Some special trains will also start from Pune and go all the way till Madgaon.
The Western Railway will run 38 trips of 8 pairs of Ganpati Special trains with effect from September 3. Some of the trains include Mumbai Central-Suratkal special (2 services), Mumbai Central-Madgaon special (3 services), Bandra Terminus-Madgaon (3 services), Bandra Terminus-Kudal (2 services) etc. Some trains will also start from Ahmedabad and Udhna stations.
These trains will halt at quite a few stations like Dadar, Thane, Panvel, Roha, Mangaon, Veer, Khed, Chiplun, Savarda, Aravali Road, Sangameshwar Road, Ratnagiri, Adavali, Vilavade, Rajapur Road, Vaibhavwadi Road, Kankavali, Sindhudurg, Kudal, Thivim and Madgaon to cover most part of Konkan belt.
The railway officials said that only passengers having confirmed tickets will be permitted to board these special trains adhering to all norms, SOPs related to COVID19 during the boarding, travel and at destination.
