Staff Reporter :
In order to celebrate Eid-ul-Fitr with the family members at homes, tens of thousands of people swarmed to Kamalapur Railway Station on Friday to buy advance train tickets for July 3.
They went to the station to get 65 percent of the tickets, as 25 percent is being sold on mobile phones, while five percent
of the seats has been reserved for VIPs and remaining five percent for railway officials and employees.
Bangladesh Railway is set to launch a new train named ‘Sonar Bangla Express’ on the Dhaka-Chittagong section.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will inaugurate the new inter-city non-stop train today at Kamalapur Railway Station. Adequate security measures have been taken in and around the station.
There will be no sale of train tickets at Kamalapur Railway Station on June 25. Tickets for July 4 will be sold on June 26.
The 16-car inter-city train will stop at the Dhaka Airport Station only and will reach Chittagong in five hours and 40 minutes, officials said.
‘Sonar Bangla Express’ will be the second non-stop train in the country. The first one was the Subarna Express train introduced in April 1998.
General Manager of East Zone Md Abdul Hye said, “Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is scheduled to launch this new train today, but its commercial journey begins the next day.”
He said that, all the 16 cars of the train had been imported from Indonesia.
The train will run every day of the week except Saturdays. There will be 746 seats including those from the categories Snigdha Chair (air-conditioned), Shovon Chair and AC Berth.
Every day, ‘The Sonar Bangla Express’ will depart Kamalapur Station at 7am and reach Chittagong at 12:40pm, Abdul Hye said. The down train will leave Chittagong at 5pm and arrive at the capital around 10:40pm.
Meanwhile, the people had to wait to collect the tickets for long time, some even stayed in queue for 18 hours.
Saifuddin Ahmed, a private job holder, stood in queue for a ticket to Rajshahi at 3pm on Thursday.
“After 18 hours in queue, I finally got the ticket at 9am Friday morning,” he told The New Nation.
To battle boredom during these long hours, Alamgir chatted up others in queue and played cards with them.
Jagannath University student Kamal Uddin expressed his utter disappointment as he failed to get an AC coach ticket to Rajshahi after a wait of nine hours.
“I have been in queue for so long. They started selling tickets at 8am Friday morning. Now they say there is no more ticket for sale, it is all finished,” he said.
School teacher Abdul Karim has been in queue since 4am Friday for a ticket to Pabna’s Chatmohar.
“My token number is 64. I don’t know whether I will get a ticket or not,” he said.
The counters for northern and southern districts were packed with people, but that was not the case on other counters. Kamalapur Station Manager Sitangshu Chakrabarty said, 18,000 tickets of 33 trains are being sold every day during this Eid season.
Eighty-four additional compartments will be added to various trains. Three pairs of extra trains will ply on Dhaka-Khulna, Dhaka-Parbatipur and Dhaka-Dewanganj sections, he said.
In order to celebrate Eid-ul-Fitr with the family members at homes, tens of thousands of people swarmed to Kamalapur Railway Station on Friday to buy advance train tickets for July 3.
They went to the station to get 65 percent of the tickets, as 25 percent is being sold on mobile phones, while five percent
of the seats has been reserved for VIPs and remaining five percent for railway officials and employees.
Bangladesh Railway is set to launch a new train named ‘Sonar Bangla Express’ on the Dhaka-Chittagong section.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will inaugurate the new inter-city non-stop train today at Kamalapur Railway Station. Adequate security measures have been taken in and around the station.
There will be no sale of train tickets at Kamalapur Railway Station on June 25. Tickets for July 4 will be sold on June 26.
The 16-car inter-city train will stop at the Dhaka Airport Station only and will reach Chittagong in five hours and 40 minutes, officials said.
‘Sonar Bangla Express’ will be the second non-stop train in the country. The first one was the Subarna Express train introduced in April 1998.
General Manager of East Zone Md Abdul Hye said, “Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is scheduled to launch this new train today, but its commercial journey begins the next day.”
He said that, all the 16 cars of the train had been imported from Indonesia.
The train will run every day of the week except Saturdays. There will be 746 seats including those from the categories Snigdha Chair (air-conditioned), Shovon Chair and AC Berth.
Every day, ‘The Sonar Bangla Express’ will depart Kamalapur Station at 7am and reach Chittagong at 12:40pm, Abdul Hye said. The down train will leave Chittagong at 5pm and arrive at the capital around 10:40pm.
Meanwhile, the people had to wait to collect the tickets for long time, some even stayed in queue for 18 hours.
Saifuddin Ahmed, a private job holder, stood in queue for a ticket to Rajshahi at 3pm on Thursday.
“After 18 hours in queue, I finally got the ticket at 9am Friday morning,” he told The New Nation.
To battle boredom during these long hours, Alamgir chatted up others in queue and played cards with them.
Jagannath University student Kamal Uddin expressed his utter disappointment as he failed to get an AC coach ticket to Rajshahi after a wait of nine hours.
“I have been in queue for so long. They started selling tickets at 8am Friday morning. Now they say there is no more ticket for sale, it is all finished,” he said.
School teacher Abdul Karim has been in queue since 4am Friday for a ticket to Pabna’s Chatmohar.
“My token number is 64. I don’t know whether I will get a ticket or not,” he said.
The counters for northern and southern districts were packed with people, but that was not the case on other counters. Kamalapur Station Manager Sitangshu Chakrabarty said, 18,000 tickets of 33 trains are being sold every day during this Eid season.
Eighty-four additional compartments will be added to various trains. Three pairs of extra trains will ply on Dhaka-Khulna, Dhaka-Parbatipur and Dhaka-Dewanganj sections, he said.
