I thought my blog post is already very lengthy, so I skipped this part.
I did asked him (Maternal Uncle), say if a train starts 1 hr delay from NDLS or in course of get delayed, then itтАЩs delay increases тАЬexponentiallyтАЭ in NCR (As myself was victim of so called тАЬBermuda TriangleтАЭ, last summer my train 18202 NTV Durg Exp departed BSB 30 min late and arrived ALD 6 hr late) train runs via chunar-mirzapur. Firstly he smiled and said, you take much interest in Railways. Then I told him about IRI, he was surprised! He never know there is social network site dedicated to Indian Railways.
Anyway...
more... he explained me as follows:
тАЬEvery railway zone in India has a dedicated time slot for freight movement, in your zone SECR (Durg, Chhattisgarh) movement of passenger trains are very less from midnight to early morning, that doesnтАЩt means point man relaxes on his chair, No! At that time he is busy controlling fright traffic. But here we (NCR) have no such comfort of dedicated freight slot, all trains viz freight trains or passenger trains are sandwiched with each other, due to over-saturation of traffic. If a train starts journey with a delay or gets delayed in the course of journey, it de-rails from its scheduled time table slot. I let you know freight trains also runs on predefined schedule, railways has more pressure to run freight trains on time than passenger trains so that railway can deliver items in promised time to industries, which are main business client and source of incomeтАЭ.
тАЬIf a passenger train, runs with full patronage then also railway occurs loss of Rs. 900 тАУ 1000 per km of run! (A surprise for me!!). Charge of freight has increased 4 тАУ 5 times from last 3 decades, but not much increase in passenger fare, actually govt. gives subsidy to passenger fare. Freight charge in India is as per US/UKтАЩs standards but passenger fare is on an average 3 times less than US/UKтАЩs standard.тАЭ(High speed trains not taken into consideration, London/NYC Subway taken into consideration)
So, here comes answer to your query Gaurav, defence provide subsidy to defence people, yuva subsidy by HRD, etc. Actually railway provides indirectly 3 times subsidy to all Indians. :)
He continuesтАж
тАЬSo, what railways earns from freight movement, has to spend to compensate loss occurred by passenger movement. Plus, railway has to ensure payment to its employees, to counter deprivation of rolling stock and rail infrastructure and allot budget for new railway projects. That is the reason why railways runs into loss, still passenger trains are running jam packed throughout the year.тАЭ