Q. What is Duronto Express Trains?
Duronto Express is a category of long distance trains on Indian Railways. The special feature of these trains is that they run non-stop from source to destination, barring technical halts. All Duronto Express trains can be easily recognized by the characteristic yellow-green livery of their passenger coaches. Several Duronto Express services connect the metros and major state capitals of India. The Duronto Express trains are projected to be the fastest trains between the particular pair of cities they serve, although this is not necessarily true for all services.
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Since several years, the Government of India's Ministry of Railways (India) has been trying to introduce high speed rail in India. In 2007, the ministry chose the 500-kilometre stretch between Delhi and Amritsar for a pre-feasibility study. The cost for setting up the Delhi-Amritsar corridor is estimated to be around Rs 25, 000 crores. On 19 January 2009, the former Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav said that his ministry was in the process of appointing global consultants for introducing the high-speed trains on certain routes.Besides the Delhi-Amritsar route, Pune-Mumbai-Ahmedabad, Hyderabad-Dornakal-Vijaywada-Chennai, Chennai-Bangalore-Coimbatore-Ernakulam and Howrah-Haldia. But, this High Speed rail service for India is expected to be completed on a long run. Meanwhile, the new Railway minister of India, Mamata Banerjee announced the introduction of the non-stop Duronto Express trains in the Indian Rail budget 2009-10 as a first step towards high speed rail travel.


With four different classes of accommodation, the Duronto trains provide more passenger facilities than any other train service on Indian Railways. These classes are AC First Class (1A), AC Two Tier(2A), AC Three Tier(3A) and Three Tier Economy(3E). The livery of these trains is painted splashes of colours. The colour scheme shows greenery with runners legs in blue. Pantry cars are also provided in the trains where the costs of the meals are included in the ticket itself.

The fares for the Duronto trains are less than other prestigious superfast rail services such as the Rajdhani Express which ply the same routes. The fare in the new "Economy" AC 3-tier class (similar to that of Garib Rath Express) of the Duronto is marginally more than the fares of the standard AC 3-tier class because the fares include food and catering costs.
The AC 3 tier economy class(3E class) introduced Side Middle Berths (SM), increasing the capacity of each coach from 72 to 81 passengers. This enables the trains to carry more passengers and consequently reduce waiting lists on these busy routes as well as the ticket costs. However, the class was discontinued from the New Delhi-Sealdah Duronto Express after passenger protest.


The Duronto services would consist of five classes of accommodation namely First AC, Two-tier AC, Three-tier AC, Economy Three-tier AC (similar to that of Garib Rath Express) and Non AC Sleeper Class (Available in Mumbai-Nagpur Duronto, Secunderabad New Delhi Duranto, Howrah-Yeshwantapur Duronto and New Delhi - Allahabad Duronto). The Rakes comprise ICF coaches used in the Rajdhanis and Garib Raths earlier.Each Duronto coach is 24 metres long, compared to the regular coach length of 22.3 metres. The distance between coaches is less too - 460 mm instead of the regular 960 mm.
Besides safety and hygiene features like dustbins and fire extinguishers, the coaches have sleeker designs for bottle holders and switches, mobile charging points, sliding transparent doors between coaches, and LED night lamps instead of regular fluorescent lights.
The train is built of stainless steel (which makes the coaches lighter by about two tonnes each), which is lighter, anti-corrosive and more durable than the conventional 'corten steel'. An important safety feature is the central buffer couplers whose enhanced load capacity makes the train derailment-proof.


The Duronto Expresses are one of the fastest trains in India. These trains run faster than Rajdhani Express trains which hold the record of the fastest long-distance trains in India.This has been made possible as these trains, unlike the Rajdhani Express, will have no intermediate stoppages and run in much the same speed clocked by Rajdhani.For example, the new bi-weekly non-stop train between New Delhi and Sealdah will take 16 hours to cover the journey, as against 17 hours taken by Rajdhani Express.The trains will, however, have technical stoppages at a few stations for facilitating staff and loco change but the transit time will come down drastically.The trains will adhere to the speed limit of 110 km/h {non stop}. The Chennai and Pune Duronto are projected to run at a speed of 130 km/h.


The Duronto trains are to ply between the Metro Cities of India. During the inaugural announcement of these services in the Railway Budget 2009-10 (made on 3 July 2009), 12 weekly, bi-weekly and tri-weekly Duronto trains were announced. In the next rail budget of 24 February 2010, ten more Duronto were announced.

1 Sealdah-New Delhi AC 12259 U, 12260 D Bi-Weekly
2 Mumbai-Jaipur Duronto AC 12239 D, 12240 U Bi-weekly
3 New Delhi - Lucknow AC 12271 U, 12272 D Tri-weekly
4 New Delhi - Allahabad 12275 U, 12276 D Tri-weekly
5 Hazrat Nizamuddin - Chennai Central 12270 U, 12269 D
6 Hazrat Nizamuddin - Pune AC 12264 U, 12263 D Bi-weekly
7 Mumbai - Howrah Junction AC 12261 U, 12262 D Bi-weekly
8 Mumbai - Ahmedabad AC 12267 U, 12268 D Tri-weekly
9 Mumbai - Nagpur 12289 U, 12290 D Tri Weekly
10 Howrah - Yeswanthpur 12245 U, 12246 D 5 days a Week
11 Ernakulam - Hazrat Nizamuddin 12283 U, 12284 D Weekly
12 Ernalulam - Lokamanya tilak terminus AC 12223 U, 12224 D Bi weekly.
13 Secunderabad Junction - Hazrat Nizamuddin (New Delhi) 12285 U, 12286 D Bi-weekly
14 Secunderabad Junction - Lokmanya Tilak Terminus (Mumbai) AC 12219 U, 12220 D Bi-weekly
15 New Delhi - Howrah Junction 12273 U, 12274 D Bi-weekly
16 Delhi Sarai Rohilla-Jammu Tawi 12265 U, 12266 D Tri-weekly
17 Pune - Howrah AC 12222 U, 12221 D Bi- weekly
18 Chennai-Coimbatore AC 12243 U, 12244 D CC Ex All days Except Tuesdays
19 Howrah- Digha AC 12847 U, 12848 D CC Ex Daily
20 Puri - Howrah AC 12277 U, 12278 D CC Ex Daily
21 New Delhi - Bhubaneshwar 12281 U, 12282 D Weekly
22 Yeswanthpur-Delhi Sarai Rohilla AC 12213 U, 12214 D Weekly
23 Mumbai-Indore Duronto AC 12227 D, 12228 U Bi-weekly


The proposed Duronto Trains announced in 2011-12 Railway Budget by Mamata Banerjee (Minister of Railways)
Allahabad-Mumbai AC Duronto (bi-weekly)
Pune-Ahmedabad AC Duronto (tri-weekly)
Sealdah-Puri non AC Duronto (tri-weekly)
Secunderabad-Visakhapatnam AC Duronto (tri-weekly)
Madurai-Chennai AC Duronto (bi-weekly)
Chennai-Thiruvananthapuram AC Duronto (bi-weekly)
Mumbai Central-New Delhi AC Duronto (bi-weekly)
Nizamuddin-Ajmer non-AC Duronto (bi-weekly)
Shalimar-Patna Duronto (tri-weekly)


The frequency of following Duronto Trains have been increased:
Mumbai CST-Howrah Duronto Express from 2 days to 4 days
Mumbai-Ahmedabad Duronto Express from 3 days to daily
Sealdah-New Delhi Duronto Express from 2 days to 5 days
Howrah-Yesvantpur Duronto Express from 4 days to 5 days
Nagpur-Mumbai CST Duronto Express from 3 days to daily