Few chair car coaches to have single long seats in Flying Ranee

The new Flying Ranee train, which runs between Mumbai and Surat, will replace some of its bucket seats with regular single long seats due to complaints about seating capacity. The train's composition will also be changed, with four second class chair car coaches being replaced with general second-class coaches. The changes will come into effect on July 27.

Mumbai: After complaints from commuters about its seating capacity, the new Flying Ranee train, which plies between Mumbai and Surat, will have its bucket seats in a few of the chair car coaches replaced with the regular single long seats.

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The coach composition of the train has also been changed and it will come into effect from July 27, according to the Western Railway (WR).

In the new Flying Ranee Express, the WR had replaced the regular ICF make of the double decker train with Linke Hofmann Busch (LHB) ones. The LHB coaches are used in Rajdhani trains.

After Darshana Jardosh, minister of state for Railways, had flagged off the new Flying Ranee Express train on July 16, passengers had been complaining about it being old with torn seats. They were also unhappy with the lesser seating capacity as the bucket seats did not allow for more people to squeeze in, unlike the single long seats.

On Wednesday, the WR officials said that four second class chair car coaches on the train have been replaced with general second-class coaches.

“This will have single long seats instead of bucket seats. This will provide more seating space for passengers,” said a WR official.

“The composition of the train, comprising 21 coaches (including Power Car), has been revised. It will now run with two coaches of AC chair car, 10 coaches of second-class seating and eight general second-class coaches,” said Sumit Thakur, chief PRO, WR.

The double decker coaches in Flying Ranee had completed their service life and were replaced with LHB coaches. After the replacement with 21 coaches of LHB, the seating capacity was 1,999 passengers. The total seating capacity of 19 coaches was 1,996 passengers in the old ICF rake.

“People would still want the railways to introduce a double decker LHB train in future. It was an iconic train and by replacing it with a single decker one, the charm is lost,” said M Patil, resident of Boisar.

The Mumbai-Surat Flying Ranee Express was started in 1906. The train was named by the wife of the then district superintendent of Bulsar (now Valsad) in Bombay Central before a large gathering. It was stopped intermittently and has been on the tracks regularly since 1950.