Passengers sitting on the roofs of coaches, long journeys rumbling across Victorian infrastructure... Indian railways simultaneously evoke chaotic and iconic scenes to most Westerners. What you don’t think of is pizza and chicken.
It’s time to redraw that mental picture. Last month the sector took a bold step forward when its latest innovation was announced – the availability of KFC on trains.
The partnership between the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) and KFC enables the delivery of fried chicken direct to passengers on trains travelling through New Delhi station. The agreement follows a similar announcement with Domino’s Pizza in February.
Customers place orders online, by text or phone, up to two hours before the train arrives at the designated station. The fast-food delivery man waits at the station, jumps on the train, makes the delivery and disembarks before it leaves.
The food on Indian trains is reportedly poor, so the availability of pizza and chicken is going down well, much as one suspects it would in the UK. Domino’s is delivering to some 200 trains in India and plans to expand to new routes. India’s rail network is not easily ignored. It’s 41,000 miles long, the fourth largest railway in the world. It carries 23 million passengers a day, 8.4 billion a year.
But pizza delivery isn’t the only area where Indian railways are innovating. Last month also saw the first solar-powered coaches rolled out on the country’s Northern Railway. Photovoltaic panels attached to the roofs of coaches produce enough electricity to power the train’s lights. Sitting on top of trains has been banned in India since 2010, it’s worth noting.
According to Indian Railways, the state-run parent company of IRCTC, solar power could run both the lights and air conditioning on coaches and reduce a train’s diesel consumption by up to 90,000 litres per year. After a pilot study it has plans to roll out the technology over the next five years.
Indian Railways are ahead of the game with solar power. Yet despite its immense size, the country’s rail network has no high-speed trains. Politicians have repeatedly made promises to introduce them, but they are yet to be brought in. The project furthest forward is a plan to link Mumbai with Ahmedabad by a 505km high-speed line being pushed forward by Japan. It will not be built for at least another 10 years, if at all. So, for the time being at least, India’s trains may not be fast, but at least their food is.