Slew of Durontos, Shatabdis announced

As many as nine new Duronto trains, three Shatabdi Express trains and double-decker air conditioned services on two routes were announced by Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee today.

As many as nine new Duronto trains, three Shatabdi Express trains and double-decker air conditioned services on two routes were announced by Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday.

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The new Shatabdi Express would link Pune-Secunderabad, Jaipur-Agra and Ludhiana-Delhi, while the AC double-decker services are proposed on Jaipur-Delhi and Ahmedabad-Mumbai routes.

The Duronto trains are Allahabad-Mumbai AC (bi-weekly), Pune-Ahmedabad AC (tri-weekly), Sealdah-Puri non-AC (tri-weekly), Secunderabad-Visakhapatnam AC (tri-weekly), Madurai-Chennai AC (bi-weekly), Chennai-Thiruvananthapuram AC (bi-weekly), Mumbai Central-New Delhi AC (bi-weekly), Nizamuddin-Ajmer non-AC (bi-weekly) and Shalimar-Patna (tri-weekly).

To mark the 150th birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda in 2013, Banerjee, in her rail budget proposed introduction of new trains called "Vivek Express". The first four such trains would be introduced on Dibrugarh -Thiruvantharam-Kanyakumari Express (weekly) via Kokrajhar, Dwarka-Tuticorin Express (weekly) via Wadi, Howrah-Mangalore Express (weekly) via Palghat and Bandra(T)-Jammu Tawi Express (weekly) via Marwar-Degana-Ratangarh-Jakhal-Ludhiana.

Four Kavi Guru Express trains would also proposed to be introduced to mark the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore. They will be on the routes of Howrah-Azimganj Express (daily) via Sagardighi, Guwahati-Jaipur Express (weekly) via Kasganj-Faizabad-Gorakhpur-Kokrajhar, Howrah-Bolpur Express (daily) and Howrah-Porbandar Express (weekly).