East Coast Railway | Image Resource : media2.intoday.in
The eastern part of India is very densely populated and numerous trains run through this region at different times of the day. Only the coastal areas Eastern India is inhabited by plenty of people, over the major cities of Vishakhapatnam, Waltair, Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Sambalpur and Puri. Therefore, Indian Railways have sorted out this whole coastal region of Andhra Pradesh and Orissa, as a new zone for running the trains on regular basis.
On 1996, Indian Railways added seven more zones to its existing zones, among which East Coast Railway is a prominent name. This zone was started with only Khurda Road Division, while it was extended with the addition of 2 more divisions on 2003, namely Waltair and Sambalpur. Presently, this railway zone consists of Orissa, North Eastern parts of Andhra Pradesh, along with Bastar and Dantewada, 2 districts of Chhattisgarh.
Special features of the East Coast Railway map
The headquarter of east coast zone is located in Bhubaneswar and the East Coast Railway map consists of 185 railway stations, running over 42,500 Km of rail routes and among which a certain percentage of route is now electrified, which means the electric trains run on these routes; while the rest of the trains still run on diesel.
There are plenty of double and single lines all over the routes of this railway zone; like Vizianagaram-Raipur Double Line BG, Cuttack-Angul Broad Line BG and Bobbili - Salur Single Line BG.
There are quite a few tourist destinations and industrial cities along the routes of East Coast Railway, for which the trains of this zone always are found to be packed with passengers, throughout the year.
The most of the notable East Coast Railway Stations are Cuttack Junction, Khurda Road Junction, Sambalpur Junction, Koraput Junction, Titagarh Junction, Vizianagaram Junction, Rayagada Junction and Naupada Junction.
Checking the availability of the East Coast Railway tickets
The cost of the train tickets of this zone are usually quite low and affordable by the common people, living in this coastal region of Eastern India.
The passengers should book their East Coast Railway tickets, months prior to the date of travel; mainly during the peak tourist seasons.
The online ticket booking can be done via credit cards or debit cards, and the passengers mostly do not need to pay any extra charge for using this card payment mode.
After the booking is done, the status of the booked tickets can be checked online, till the tickets are actually confirmed by the railways.
Check the East Coast Railway timetable online
The railway timetables are usually found in all the railway stations, where the passengers can know about the schedules of different trains, so that they can plan their tour programs. But the online East Coast Railway timetable can be found from the website of IRCTC, which is available on the mobile apps as well, which is needed to be downloaded for future uses. The availability of the train tickets can also be checked from these online time tables of the trains of this railway zone.