Even as passengers via Kottayam are expected to save 10 minutes of commuting time after the doubling of the 16-km Ettumanur-Chingavanam track, there are demands that the Southern Railway take steps to double short stretches of the tracks leading from the Shoranur station to Thrissur and Palakkad.
This will be crucial for completing double tracks on the entire Thiruvananthapuram-Mangaluru rail corridor. “Railways are yet to take a call on doubling around a km of the tracks from the Shoranur station towards Thrissur and Palakkad. These two corridors hold up trains coming on the double tracks from Mangaluru, that proceed southwards of Shoranur,” says P. Krishnakumar, general secretary of the Thrissur Railway Passengers’ Association.
The two single-track stretches south of Shoranur can even affect the introduction of rail services from Kerala through the newly electrified Konkan rail corridor, he says.
