Increased Capacity for Konkan Railways using Clock face scheduling system

Konkan Railways was one of the mostimpressive and difficult rail project in the history ofindependent India. But today it’s showing it’s age asit’s a single line curing through the hilly mountainsand hills of the Konkan Railways. It’s a seriousbottleneck in the daily operations as it’s being usedextensively over it’s designed limit. A total of 13trains run per direction throughout the entire route,majority passenger trains but adding more onlycauses more delays and congestion on the system.Another issue is that the trains don’t stop at moststations so the locals of the Konkan region rarelybenefit from it, this is proven by the fact thatMSRCTC ridership data which are discussed furtherin the paper. The line also connects the busy portsof Mangalore, Goa and Mumbai, thus freight traffichas also been increasing steadily. A similar issuewas present in the Swiss Railways as they also dealwith mountainous terrain and high attitude and thispaper deals with the benefits and limitations ofimplementing the same clock based schedulingsystem in the Konkan Railways for betterconnectivity in the region and increasing thethroughput of the entire system while keeping costlow and using the same rail infrastructure presentwithout any major investment in tunneling andbridges.