KARACHI: With the guard waving the green flag from the power van, Pakistan Railways’ first of five special Eid trains left from the City Station in Karachi on Friday morning with Peshawar as its designated stop.

The train comprising 16 bogies chugged along after a brief 15-minute stop at the Cantonment Railway Station where most of its passengers boarded shortly after it departed from City Station at 11am. The train is expected to make further stops at Khanpur, Multan, Khanewal, Faisalabad, Sargodha, Jhelum, Rawalpindi, etc, with its expected time of arrival in Peshawar 10.30pm on Saturday.

Farzana Ismail heading to Khanewal for Eid with her four sons Khalil, Adeel, Faheem and Hammad was happy to have got seats in the train. “I wanted to spend Eid with my brother and his family in Khanewal. We gladly paid Rs1,000 each for the seats because it is difficult to find seats at this time, and the intercity buses are far more expensive,” she said.

Riaz Ahmed and his family were going to Faisalabad and said that he wasn’t sure how much a regular train ticket cost though. When paying Rs1,480 for his Eid train ticket he was informed that he was getting a 33 per cent discount. “Now the fan above my berth seems out of order. Perhaps that is what the discount was for,” he remarked laughingly.

Nadeem Qureshi, who was going to Jhelum, meanwhile informed Dawn that he had paid Rs1,580 for his ticket this time and being a frequent Pakistan Railways traveller he usually paid Rs1,420 for the same journey. “Travelling in the special train comes with a special price. What discount are they talking about?” he asked. “And the bogies of this train are old and dirty. It looks like the Railways have attached old local train bogies to the engine,” he added.

Ahmed Raza, also going to Khanewal, said that he is always relying on the Eid special trains to take him to his family there around Eid time. “I work as a fruit vendor in Karachi and don’t want to make a loss leaving earlier. I go to Punjab by Eid train every year. I know the Railway exploits this fact as so many people are in a rush to get to their families around this time. But what other better option is there for us to travel?” he asked.

According to information shared by Pakistan Railways, there are five special trains in all with the service to continue till June 28. They are expected to transport some 500,000 passengers from all over the country. The second such train left from Quetta at 11.30am also on Friday. The third one is to leave from Cantonment Railway Station at 11am on Saturday. The fourth train will leave from Rawalpindi at 7am on Sunday and the fifth will leave from Multan also at 7am on Wednesday (June 28).

To accommodate more passengers, additional bogies are being fixed with the trains on the directions of Railways Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique.

Security concerns

In order to provide security to the trains and protect the tracks during the journey, Inspector General for Railways Munir Ahmed Chishti had several policemen travelling in the trains as well as guarding the stations and tracks.

“The policemen who get on from Karachi will ride till Rohri from where more men from Sukkur Police will get on the train to travel till Khanewal where another change of guard will take place,” informed one constable boarding the first train.

“We have been briefed to stay alert at all times and look out for unattended luggage. We are also observing passengers for any kind of strange or suspicious behaviour,” said another constable posted at the City Station platform.

Published in Dawn, June 24th, 2017