New Amrit Bharat Train: Good news for railway passengers. The much-anticipated Amrit Bharat Express, connecting Dhanbad to South India, will now be inaugurated on March 11. The Coimbatore-Dhanbad Amrit Bharat Express was originally scheduled to be inaugurated from Madurai on March 1. The inauguration ceremony will now take place at Tiruchirapalli station.
The Amrit Bharat Express will be flagged off from Pottanur to Dhanbad instead of Coimbatore. Regular trains will also run between Dhanbad and Pottanur. Pottanur is an alternate station for Coimbatore city.
Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav announced the Dhanbad-Coimbatore Amrit Bharat train on February 2. He sent a letter to Dr. L. Murugan, a Rajya Sabha member from Tamil Nadu and Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting and Parliamentary Affairs, informing him of the approval of four new pairs of trains, including the Pottanur-Dhanbad Amrit Bharat train.
Will run as an express, with numbers issued on both sides; route announcement soon
Originally, this train was planned as a superfast train, with a corresponding number. Now, it will become an express train with the numbers 16619 Pottanur-Dhanbad and 16620 Dhanbad-Potanur. Whether it will run from Dhanbad via Gomoh, Gaya, and DDU, or Dhanbad, Bokaro, and Ranchi, will be officially announced soon.
Dhanbad gets three new trains in 48 days, two of them direct services. With the Pottanur-Dhanbad Amrit Bharat Expressway, Dhanbad will have three new trains in 48 days, from January to March. Previously, on January 18th, Prime Minister Narendra Modi flagged off the Howrah-Anand Vihar Amrit Bharat Expressway.
Last month, on February 24th, the Railway Minister and the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh inaugurated new trains between Bhopal and Dhanbad. Of these, the Dhanbad-Bhopal and Dhanbad-Potnur Amrut Bharat trains will provide direct service from Dhanbad.
Meanwhile The Railway Board of Indian Railways has sanctioned a new Amrit Bharat Express train from Cherlapalli railway station in Hyderabad to Nagercoil. This will be the third Amrit Bharat Express to connect to Hyderabad. One Amrit Bharat Express is already running from Hyderabad to Muzaffarpur. Another train from Thiruvananthapuram was also flagged off by Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier. According to officials, Amrit Bharat trains will have sleeper class as well as general second class (non-AC) coaches. The date when this new train service will start is yet to be finalised.