Myanma Railways will halt services during Thingyan Water Festival.
MYANMA Railways plans to stop operating of some Rail Bus Engine (RBE) trains in the circular and suburban railroad sections during the Thingyan Water Festival, the most widely celebrated public holiday in Myanmar.
Train schedules will be reduced by half on the holidays, as the MR predicts a decline in its passenger numbers during the festival period every year.
The key objective of the plan is to avoid probable damage to trains during the water festival, said U Zaw Lwin, region manager of the MRs Transport Division.
Although the MR plans to decrease its train schedules, the trains will still stop at all stations.
The MR is now operating its rail transport services to almost 100,000 commuters on a daily basis through 23 trains and 255 scheduled routes.
The MR puts forth continuous efforts to offer better services to the passengers through several railway improvement projects.
Several railway improvement projects including repair of railroads, replacement of carriages and installation of modern signals and communication systems to run all railways yards and workshops to full capacity have been implemented by the MR in collaboration with Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
The MR estimates that the number of commuters is likely to increase after the current projects are completed.
A locomotive pulling into Yangon Central Railway Station.
Myanma Railways will run express trains for the Mandalay-Myitkyina route in fiscal 2017-2018, according to the railway system, which operates under the ministry of Transport and Communications.
The express trains have greater advantages than normal trains. Normal trains have a rougher ride because the railroads are not smooth, whereas the newer express trains are much more comfortable for the passengers to ride on.
The express train coaches were imported from China. Myanma Railways had the old coaches replaced with the express ones on Yangon-Myitkyina line for the first time.
The number of passengers has increased after introduction of new express train coaches on the Yangon-Mandalay route.
Express train coaches will arrive in the 2017-2018 fiscal year and become operational soon afterwards.
The first lot of six locomotives are ready to be shipped next month, while the rest will be delivered by December this year.
New Delhi: The Indian Railways will export 18 modern diesel locomotives to Myanmar soon. The engines worth about Rs 200 crore are manufactured at the Diesel Locomotive Works (DLW) in Varanasi.
The first lot of six locomotives are ready to be shipped next month, while the rest will be delivered by December this year. A high-level team of Myanmar Railways led by the chief of its mechanical and electrical department had recently inspected the locomotives that are equipped with latest features.
The state-of-the-art DLW has been exporting locos to many countries, including Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Malaysia. The export orders are executed by RITES, the export arm of the Indian Railways. RITES has exported over 60 locomotives, besides various other rolling stock and machinery, to Myanmar in the past 18 years.
The DLW-build locomotives are preferred in Myanmar due to their good hauling capacity and easy maintenance, said a senior RITES official. These locos will be operational with better optimization of power transfer to wheel.
The locos have many other features such as roof-mounted dynamic brake grids, panel-mounted brake system, fabricated bogies, and higher rating traction motors with speed sensing mechanism.
In Photo: A passenger looks out of a Circle Line train, as others who just disembarked walk along the tracks in Yangon, Myanmar. The charmingly decrepit line, built more than 60 years ago to connect rural suburbs to the citys commercial heart, is a functioning, if fading, piece of the past; daily commuters say that a promised modernization cannot come soon enough.
YANGON, MyanmarTo ride Yangons charmingly decrepit Circle Line train is to ride through history. Built more than 60 years ago to connect rural suburbs and townships to the citys commercial heart, its trainssome almost as old as the line itselfmove nearly 100,000 people a day, in a slow, 28-mile loop around Myanmars biggest city.
Like much else in the country, which is still emerging from decades of isolation under military rule, the Circle Line is a functioning, if fading, piece of the past. But modernization is on the way, and commuters who take the train daily say it cannot come soon enough.
Some of the trains are Hungarian imports from the 1960s. Newer ones, from Japan, were introduced in 2007, but even those were old, decommissioned trains. Comforts are scarce in the oldest carriages; the bench seats are hard, and many of the fans seem to be broken.
The older trains hobble along at what can seem little more than jogging speed. Passengers sometimes hop on and off while the train is still in motion.
My trip started on Platform 7 of bustling Yangon Central Station, Myanmars largest train station, built by the British in 1877. Heading counterclockwise, the train crawled through sprawling rail depots and repair yards. Soon the larger, national trains branched off and headed north, and the six tracks thinned to two, servicing the Circle Line alone.
As the train moved up Yangons east side, mildew-stained buildings started to give way to farmland. The carriages gradually emptied out as the train looped around the citys northern reaches, past open fields, a golf course, a military base and palm huts where some of Yangons poorest live.
Railway employees are supposed to wear crisp, white Myanmar Railways shirts with epaulets. But at some of the routes 38 stations, like Danyingon in the north, they frequently strip down to their undershirts to keep cool in the sweltering ticket booths and control rooms, which often do not have a working fan.
Coming down along the citys western edge, the train passed Insein Station and the notorious prison of the same name, where the military regimes locked up dissidents even monks, after the so-called Saffron Revolution in 2007. Approaching downtown, the train began to fill up again, with stylishly dressed professionals in jeans and pressed shirts. Finally, it pulled into Yangon Central Station, completing the circle, a little less than three hours after its departure.
At just 15 cents to ride the entire loop, the Circle Line train is affordable even for the poorand for many years, few others would use it, said Moe Moe Lwin, director of the Yangon Heritage Trust.
The public impression is that it is dirty, slow, unreliable, Moe Moe Lwin said.
Only the poorest people used it because they had no choice, but it was very irregular and inefficient, she added. The far satellite towns only had the railway network to access the city, because the buses would not service them.
It was mainly used by vendors taking their goods to market, so blue-collar workers would not use it because it was too dirty and full of produce, Moe Moe Lwin said.
But that equation has changed in recent years, as economic growth and neglected infrastructure have resulted in crushing traffic on Yangons streets. More and more commuters now see the Circle Line as a sensible alternative to spending hours in a car.
A bus service introduced in January has proved so inefficient that it seems to have caused even more people to use the train. Daily ridership has since soared to 95,000, from 75,000, said Zaw Lwin, a divisional traffic manager for Myanmar Railways, which operates the Circle Line.
With its archaic fixtures and slice-of-life appeal, its crowded carriages with vendors selling fruit and newspapers, the train has become a draw for tourists seeking a picturesque experience. But commuters would gladly trade all that for a more efficient service.
We need more trains, and modern trains, Khin Hnin Oo, 41, a teacher, said as he rode the Circle Line home toward Mingaladon, north of the city. It will be good for us. Yangon has too many cars, and the buses are overcrowded.
Myanmar Railways plans major changes for the Circle Line by 2020, funded in part by a $212-million loan from Japans development agency. All of the trains are to be replaced, along with the aging tracks, and the manual, push-button signaling system is to be automated.
Trains would run more oftensubstantially reducing waiting times at the stations, like busy Danyingon.
A large market next to that station overflows onto the platforms and tracks, where villagers sell their mangoes, potatoes, watercress and other kinds of produce.
Officials hope to nearly triple the lines daily passenger numbers, to 263,000. Htun Aung Thin, general manager of Myanmar Railways, told local news outlets that the new service would be faster, with trains completing the circuit in under two hours.
Modernization would put an end to many of the Circle Lines anachronistic charms. That might make it less appealing to foreigners looking for a slice of old Yangon, or Rangoon, as it was once called. But most commuters would welcome the trade-off.
Upgrading the public transport system is the best solution for the city, Moe Moe Lwin said.
A truck that was parked across a railway line at the Yangon Circular train route, caused delay and endangered the lives of railway staff on Thursday (June 22) at around 2 pm.
Pazundaung station master, U Than Soe, who was operating a locomotive from Malwakone station to Wartan freight station, found a truck abandoned on the railway line, blocking the trains path. The train had to wait until the tracks were cleared before moving on.
According to reports, the driver could not be located. With the help of traffic police, the truck was finally removed at 6 am.
The truck driver, whose identity is still being investigated, will be prosecuted for parking his vehicle on the track and endangering officials and goods on the train.
Seikkantha Township Police Department has opened a case under the Myanma Railway law section 84 and (PA)120/17.
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