Sri Lanka Railways Forum

Sri Lanka Railways, in a move to upgrade its services and make railways the main medium of public transport, has modernised the Colombo-Kandy-Colombo Intercity service with new railway carriages imported from China.

Transport Minister Dallas Alahapperuma yesterday said: “We want to make the railways the favoured mode of transport by the public and if the operation of the railways is improved it will be a boon to the traveling public.”

“As a first step we will inaugurate the improved Colombo-Kandy-Colombo intercity service today with the train leaving the Colombo Fort railway station at 3.30 p.m. and scheduled to reach Kandy at 6.00 p.m.

The service will operate daily with the Colombo bound intercity express leaving Kandy for Colombo at 6.15 a.m.

A spokesman for Railways said that the re-introduced inter city train would comprise six carriages imported from China with many new features.

“The observation saloon with adjustable seats could accommodate 48 passengers and the one way fare will be Rs 300 per passenger.”

First class compartments would consist of 60 adjustable seats and tickets are priced at Rs 220 each.

The second class will consist of three compartments which would have 64 seats each and a ticket would cost Rs 150 while a third class seat in this train would cost Rs 100.

By Harischandra Gunaratna

Source: The Island

This entry was posted on Friday, May 16th, 2008 at 4:40 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.