Operation of MEMU to Tambaram eases anxiety of passengers returning to Chennai after Deepavali

Southern Railway's MEMU service between Madurai and Tambaram eased passenger congestion during post-Deepavali travel chaos.

The decision of Southern Railway to run a MEMU service with all unreserved coaches between Madurai and Tambaram on Sunday evening helped not just the passengers returning to Chennai after Deepavali, but also railway officials heave a sigh of relief.

The MEMU being operated for the first time between Madurai towards Chennai took almost three times the number of passengers, who otherwise could have travelled in the unreserved compartments of Chennai-bound Pandian Superfast Express.

Though the Madurai Divisional Railway officials had posted additional personnel from the security agencies along with Friends of Police and staff from commercial department, they could not manage to regulate the passengers to get into the 12 cars of the MEMU in an orderly fashion.

“We wanted to form queues for the passengers. But, the crowd was so huge and anxious that they ran in all directions to get into the compartments,” a Railway Protection Force personnel said.

The security agencies are used to regulate the passengers only for two unreserved coaches in the front and two more in the rear side of the Pandian Superfast Express. The rake of the express train comes to the platform with all the doors locked. Hence, forming the queues and sending the passengers inside the coaches through the platform side entrance on the first-come-first-served basis was very much possible.

But, it was just the opposite with regard the MEMU which had just arrived from Tambaram. All the doors on both sides, platform side and of side, of all the 12 cars had remained open.

“Hence, there was no scope to regulate the passengers with the queues. However, there was not much of any wordy quarrel or altercation among the passengers as the MEMU had seating capacity of more than 900 passengers,” a senior railway official said.