‘Heritage train on Katarnia-Dudhwa route’
LUCKNOW:In what came as an icing on the cake on the last day of the Uttar Pradesh Investors’ Summit, railway minister Piyush Goyal made quite a few important announcements for the state here on Thursday. Goyal, who was the chief guest at the session on Ease of Doing Business in Uttar Pradesh: The Dawn of New Era, announced that he had taken certain decisions on the spot on Maharaj ji’s (as chief minister Yogi Adityanath is often referred to) request.
HERITAGE TRAINS
Goyal announced that his department would soon begin work on converting the Baharaich-Mailani meter gauge railway line into a heritage train route with heritage trains like ones made of glass as seen in Switzerland to be introduced on the same route for tourists. “This line passes through the Katarnia Ghat and the Dudhwa, the two beautiful national parks spreading on a forest area of 450 km in UP,” he said, adding, “introduction of heritage trains will give boost to eco-tourism in a big way. He said there was the plan to convert this meter gauge line into the broad gauge line but the same, he said was not becoming possible for some legal hurdles. “Now, we will convert this into a heritage line,” he said.
He said the possibility of setting up tented five-star hotels in the forest area like ones in Rajasthan would also be explored as desired by the CM.
INCREASING PRODUCTION CAPACITY OF RAE BARELI RAIL COACH FACTORY
Taking a dig at the Congress without taking its name for not doing enough for the development of the district, Goyal said he had decided to substantially increase the production capacity of the Rae Bareli rail coach factory in a phased manner from the current 600-700 coaches a year to 3000 coaches a year within next three years. “We are in a position to increase the capacity to 1000 coaches in next 7-8 months, claiming the factory might be the world’s largest coach factory when it attained the full capacity.
RAIL ANCILLARY PARK IN FATEHPUR
The minister announced that his ministry had identified Fetehpur, one of the 110 most backward districts in the country, for setting up a rail ancillary park there to manufacture auxiliaries needed at the coach factory in Rae Bareli. “You just provide land to us near Fatehpur,” he said pointing to Adityanath.
COACH REFURBISHMENT FACTORY
Goyal said a coach refurbishment factory will be opened near Jhansi in Bundelkhand, again a backward region. The railways, he said, already had its land available in the region for this purpose. He said the ministry had decided to refurbish all the 58000 coaches, including the general coaches during next 2-3 years.
ELECTRIC LOCO IN GORAKHPUR
The minister said the work on the proposed electro locomotive shed in Gorakhpur would begin very soon. “We recently got clearances from the ministry of defence,” he said.