Over 2.5 crore passengers expected to travel by train this Diwali
This festive season, Indian Railways is expecting a massive rush—over 2.5 crore people are set to travel by train across India by the end of Diwali, Durga Puja, and Chhath in 2024.
By late October alone, more than 1.5 crore passengers had already hit the tracks.
To keep up, the railways rolled out over 12,000 special trains this year (a big jump from only a few hundred earlier), mainly operating from states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Gujarat, and the Northeastern states.
Railways' preparations for the festive rush
To manage all this movement (and chaos), Indian Railways has set up holding areas with facilities at 30 major stations to help things run smoother during peak times.
Delhi is seeing over 4.5 lakh daily departures on busy days—so yeah, it's packed!
On the bright side: track construction has sped up big time in the past decade (from about 400-600km a year to over 4,000km now).