You can now save some money by getting a railway ticket at a lesser price than before. Indian Railways is looking to make catering charges optional (which are mandatory till now). This will make total cost of train ticket inexpensive. Fare will go down.

To take advantage of this scheme, all you have to do is to tell the railways at the time of booking train ticket that you are not interested in their catering services. This can be done by marking an option in railway reservation form (which will be modified in near future).

Now, you must be thinking of your food. From where will you get food to eat if you feel hungry? This is a relevant concern especially if you are travelling by a long distance non stop train. To give you bit of a relief, we can share with you that railway officials have promised to provide local or desi home made food in train for such passengers who have opted out of catering.

There is good variety of food available at most of the Indian Railway stations. The cuisines and dishes varies from region to region and it's fascinating to see changes on variety of foods available to eat as train chugs along on its route.

Train is late so people enjoy Pav Bhaji, famous local snack in Maharashtra, at Bhusaval Junction station


In order to see if this scheme works, railway is implementing it in four trains only namely Nizamuddin-Mumbai Central (12953-12954) August Kranti Rajdhani, New Delhi-Patna Rajdhani (12309-12310), Pune-Secunderabad Shatabdi Express (12025-26) and Howrah-Puri Shatabdi Express (12277-12278), as a pilot project. Actually Indian Railways wants to promote local food makers of different regions under make in India initiative of prime minister of India.

"IRCTC will ensure provision of e-catering facility enroute stations of these four trains so that local cuisine are available to the travelling passengers", A.K. Manocha, the chairman and managing director of Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) said.

It is to be noted that IRCTC handles the catering in most of the trains running under Indian Railways. These includes some 1500 trains without pantry car attached to them.

The Ministry of Railway will take a call on feedback that it will receive from passengers during the duration of pilot project and based on it will take decision on whether to implement the optional catering option scheme in all or some trains.

The success of this exercise will no doubt boost up the sales of local food vendors as Indian Railway covers most parts of India. As most of the Indians love saving money (as they believe in "saving money is making money") it is possible that many of you would provide a positive feedback in favor of this railway scheme.

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