What is ‘Clone Train’ scheme announced by Railways for waitlisted passengers?

Indian Railways, in a bid to provide relief to the waitlisted passengers, has declared that the organisation may run special ‘clone train’ in the routes which generally see high passenger traffic. It plans to start these clone trains in a phased manner in the next 15 days.

A ‘clone’ train will be run as an alternative to an actual one and will have its number. Such a train will be operated only if there is a large number of passengers on the waiting list of a particular train.

The waitlisted passengers will be informed about their berths in the clone train soon after the reservation charts for the original scheduled trains are drawn up four hours before departure.

The idea is to have stoppages at major stations for clone trains to meet the demands of people. So, this clone train will not stop at all the decided halts of the original and will carry rakes only pertaining to bookings for those key major stations.

However, it will be a logistical challenge for the Railways as it will require additional rakes for running the clone train.