Southern Railways cancel trains, to run special services to clear rush

CHENNAI: Southern Ralway has cancelled 64 express trains departing from MGR Central, Egmore, Tambaram and Arakonam and all suburban and MRTS trains on Sunday as passenger patronage is expected to dip due to 'janata curfew'. However, railways will operate passenger specials every hour on the MMC-Truvallur-Arakonam, MMC-Gummidipoondi and Beach-Tambaram-Chengalpet suburban routes from 6am to 11am and 6pm to 10pm.
As a large number of trains are getting cancelled because of low patronage caused by Covid-19 scare, railways has made refund rules passenger-friendly giving people more time to claim refunds and has started introducing special trains to clear the rush of migrant labourers.
The zone has also started introducing special trains with more unreserved coaches for migrant labourers to return home. This is expected to clear those who are camping at various railway stations.
The MGR Chennai Central to Santragachi Special train will leave at 11.55pm on Monday and reach Santragachi at 4.30am. One special train to the destination already left on Saturday. Going by the nature of travellers, the trains will have 15 sleeper class and six general second class coaches. There will be two special trains from Santragachi to Chennai on March 23 and March 25. Another special train to the same destination will also be operated from Ernakulam. Sources said ticket patterns are being studied to see if more trains need to be introduced. There has been a spike in unreserved tickets in the last few days.
Several migrant labourers were seen camping at Cnehhai Central on Saturday as a large number of people are home-bound due to job loss or shutdown in view of the coronavirus scare.
As per the new refund rules, passengers can submit refund claim upto 45days from date of journey if railways cancels a train; if a passenger do not want to travel, claim can be filed within 30 days from date of journey. For those who want cancel ticket through 139 can get refund across the counter within 30 days from date of journey.