Western Railways brings ticket vans back to life

The railways have revived a century-old idea of running mobile ticket vans to provide reservation tickets to its passengers at their own convenience. The van will travel to interiors that are well away from railway stations on Western Railways.

According to sources in Western Railway, the van has started functioning at Vapi in Gujarat with plans to expand to other cities soon.

Western Railway archives state that such vans used to run about a century ago when WR was called the Bombay Baroda and Central Indian Railway.

“Such vans used to run during the early part of the 20th century, in about 1910 to 1920s, almost exactly a century ago. Those days such vans ran in Bombay city too as the Bombay City Improvement Trust had opened up new areas of Dadar-Matunga and other farther suburbs and the railways were asked to encourage people to move to those suburbs,” state old railway records.

“Ticket vans offered concessions like return tickets and many of them were run on festive occasions to encourage rail travel,” add the archives.

The mobile van will operate in one shift from 10.30am to 4pm for issuing rail reservation tickets in Vapi and nearby locations. This mobile van will operate six days a week.

Termed as Mushkil Aasaan, the mobile van service is intended to start a new chapter in providing convenience to the passengers by reaching out to them so that they can easily get their tickets.
The locations the mobile van will travel to have been decided according to the demand of local representatives and railway officials. The schedule is made on a provisional basis for a month and will be reviewed after one month.

Such vans have been introduced in major cities like Delhi and Kolkata too, Western Railway’s chief spokesperson Sharat Chandrayan said: “The mobile van will reach the public at prominent places like markets and industrial hubs. With this facility, the passengers will not have to travel long distances or stand in queues at reservation office,” said another senior official.