By IANS
New Delhi : There will be 53 new trains coming fiscal starting April, Railway Minister Lalu Prasad said while presenting the Railway Budget 2008-09 in the Lok Sabha Tuesday, adding that 11 trains will run more frequently and 16 trains will be extended to include more destinations.
Of the 53 new trains, 18 will run daily, 19 once a week, 2 twice a week and 14 thrice a week.
The minister also announced a weekly express between Kerala and Punjab, connecting Thiruvananthapuram with Amritsar.
There will be a weekly train from Patna in Bihar to Vasco da Gama in Goa. The train will run on the Konkan railway tracks.
Gaya in Bihar, where Buddha is said to have achieved enlightenment, will be linked with a weekly express train to Chennai in Tamil Nadu.
The New Delhi-Jammu Tawi Rajdhani Express, which now runs once a week, will become a daily train from April.
The railway minister also announced special train between Delhi and Pune from October 12 to 18 when the Commonwealth Youth Games will be held in Pune as a prelude to the Commonwealth Games in the National Capital 2010.
The 16 trains extended include Mathura-Lucknow Express to Patna and Bangalore-Coimbatore Express to Ernakulam.
The frequency of Amritsar-Saharsa (Bihar) Garib Rath and Nizamuddin-Thiruvanthapuram Rajdhani Express has been increased from biweekly to thrice a week.
The minister proposed to make Varanasi-Rajgir Bhudh Purnima Express a daily train in the new financial year. Presently it runs thrice a week.
The frequency of the thrice-weekly Baripada-Bhubaneswar Express has been doubled to six days a week.
The minister said the railways has decided to run special trains to facilitate a pilgrimage from Anandpur Sahib and Patna Sahib to Nanded’s Gurdwara Sachkahnd Sahib, where the tercentenary celebrations of Guru Granth Sahib Gurta Gaddi is being held this year.
All three places are associated with the tenth Sikh guru Gobind Singh.