Railways restores Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar train section

According to Railway authorities, train operations between Lahore, Rawalpindi, and Peshawar will be fully resumed from today onwards as all passenger and freight trains operating on this section will start running as per their operational schedule.

Railway operations along this stretch were completely shut down for the past six days due to sit-ins by religious and political parties, which cost the Railways more than Rs15 million in revenue losses along with causing people with reservations immense distress.

According to details, the Railways administration had halted all train operations on the Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar sections after religious and political parties announced their long march and subsequent sit-in towards Islamabad.

This precautionary measure was taken to prevent any unpleasant incident that may have arisen from any kind of clash with the sit-in protesters which could have possibly harmed the passengers or the railway carriages.

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However, this precautionary shutting down of services led to revenue losses as Railways had to refund millions of rupees to the passengers who had reservations along with losses due to the suspension of freight train operations.

Sources report that due to the closure of train operations between Lahore and Rawalpindi sections for the last six consecutive days, Railways had to bear a financial loss of up to Rs15 million in terms of revenue.

Chief Executive Officer Railways Nisar Ahmed Memon said that train operations between Lahore and Rawalpindi will be fully resumed from today adding that the administration will try to adopt strategies that will help recover the financial deficit of the last few days.

In other related news, Pakistan Railways announced on Monday that they have restored the operation of the Ravi Express as demanded by the people. According to Railways sources, the train was inaugurated by the Federal Minister for Narcotics Control Brig (retd) Ijaz Ahmed Shah at Nankana Railway station.

Ravi Express is scheduled to depart from Lahore at 3.30pm for Sherkot and would reach its destination at 10pm. The train was originally shut down due to the Coronavirus pandemic in March 2020.