22. During the year under review, notable commodities to China by rail were 710 metric tons of personal effects, 115 metric tons of diplomatic belongings, 45 metric tons of sewing mechines and 46 metric tons of newspapers.
23. Some 5,400 metric tons of mail and mail packets compared with some 5,336 metric tons in the preceding year were conveyed by rail to China for the Post Office. This amount was distributed fairly evenly over the whole period under review.
24. Details relating to goods traffic appear in Appendix V.
25. Operation. Train punctuality for the year under review was still unsatisfactory although there was a considerable improvement over that of last year. This poor result was mainly due to the inevitable accumula- tive effect of train crossing delays in our single line operations as a result of the sharp increase in both passenger and goods traffic in the recent years. A revised new timetable is being prepared to cope with the increased traffic and the train punctuality will be satisfactory after the introduction of this new timetable.
No. of scheduled passenger trains
Percentage
Trains on time
7,024
56.15
Trains delayed for less than 5 minutes Trains delayed for 5 minutes and over
4,179
33.40
1,307
10.45
Total No. of passenger trains run
12,510
100.00
26. A total of 3,719 special trains were run during the year as against 2,807 in the previous year, an increase of 912 or 32.5%. The number and types of special trains run for the year under review are as follows:
Goods (loaded)
Goods (empty)
Passenger
Passenger (empty)
Military
Ballast trains
Trial trains
5
***
Up
Down
Total
1,637
1,637
1,346
1,346
282
280
562
5
5
10
2
2
4
72
72
144
8
8
16
1,715
2,004
3,719
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