Express trains in India

Superfast trains are express trains which make still fewer stops, as compared to ordinary express trains, achieving still shorter journey times. Tickets cost more than ordinary express trains as they have "superfast surcharge" added to them. Trains with an average speed, excluding halts, equaling or exceeding 55 kilometres per hour (34 mph) (60 kilometres per hour (37 mph) until the early 1990s) on both up and down journeys fall into this category and are numbered with a prefix of 12 or 22 or 20 (previously 2). Including halts the average speed often is below 55 km/h. In some cases, trains run superfast where there is an overlapping express service available, and run as ordinary express trains where there is no supplementary express service. Maximum speed for superfast trains is 130 km/h.

Mail trains are the trains which earlier exclusively had mail coaches. These coaches were named as "Railway Mail Service" coaches, and were operated with collaboration between the railways and the postal department. Nowadays, mail trains no longer have these coaches. The mail trains carry mail in the luggage coach itself, but the train branding continues to be in use.

The Jan Sadharan Express and Antyodaya Express are fully Unreserved/General express trains. These trains have all Unreserved/General coaches.[1]

Apart from Antyodaya and Jan Sadharan trains, unreserved/general coaches are also present in express trains. A new series of Deen Dayalu coaches has also been proposed for long-distance trains. The Deen Dayalu coaches are more comfortable than the existing old coaches.[2]

The average speed of express trains, range from 36 kilometres per hour (22 mph) to 113 kilometres per hour (70 mph). Of this, counting up and down trains separately, 23 trains have an average speed more than 80 km/h, whereas 72 trains have an average speed between 70 and 80 km/h. The speed of express trains is calculated from the latest Indian Railways timetable.

The design of the railway switches, with a speed limit of 50–90 km/h, is the major bottleneck to higher speed.[3] Another constraint is the need to accommodate freight trains at the current top speed of 70 km/h.[4] These constraints to speed are consequences of sharing tracks with freight and lower speed suburban passenger trains.

The train stops reduce the average running speed of a train by preventing it from gaining higher speed. The distance between stops is as short as 2 km between New Bongaigaon-Bongaigaon on the Howrah–Dibrugarh Kamrup Express, and as long as 528 km between Vadodara–Kota on the Thiruvananthapuram Rajdhani Express and Maharashtra Sampark Kranti Express.

• High-speed rail in India
• List of high-speed railway lines in India
• MEMU
• Slow and fast passenger trains in India
• Suburban trains
• Rail transport in India

• List of All Express and Mail Trains
• List of All Superfast Trains