Highlights of the Railway Budget 2007-2008 presented by Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav.

• Ladies above 45 years will have greater quota.
• New rail lines to aid new steel & power plants.
  
• No more wooden seats in trains.
• 800 bogies to be added to popular trains.
• Rail infrastructure revamp planned.
• Huge investment for containers.
• Wagon production up by 10%.
• Fifty per cent fare concession for UPSC and other official examinees.
• Changes in the design of compartments to help physically disabled.
• Separate coach for vendors, milkmen and petty traders in passenger trains.
• Coupon validating machines (CVMs), after its success in Mumbai, is to be introduced in Kolkata, Chennai
• Mumbai to get smart card-based reservation system in Mumbai on trial basis
• Six thousand automatic ticket vending machines to be set up in next two years
• Number of berths to be increased from 72 to 84 in sleeper coaches.
• Tickets to be sold at petrol pumps, ATM centres, etc
• Ticket bookings and hotel bookings can be done through railway call centres to be set up
• Railway interest surplus at Rs 10,227 crore
• Freight earning s up 17% in Apr-Dec
• Passenger traffic up 14% in Apr-Dec
• 60 MT extra freight loading in 2007
• To invest in 3 storey freight containers
• 15 private container licence issued
• Pipavah-Jaipur double-decker train to begin
• Tariff discount to up high axle output; to explore independent private tariff agency.
• Railways to reserve a quota of lower seats for senior citizens and for women aged more than 45 years.
• 20-30 per cent increase in passenger traffic
• All customer complaints to be disposed in three months
• Fund balance at Rs 16,000 crore (Rs 160 billion)
• Freight: Incremental loading of 60 million tonne this year
• Cement steel traffic up by 20 to 30 per cent
• High surplus recorded without load on common man
• Plan to start three-storey container trains
• Will invest massively in container operations over the next 5 years
• Lalu claims container train experiment has been successful
• Efforts to increase container traffic five-fold to 100 million tonnes by 2011-12
• Each zone will have a SP grade officer to look into consumer complaints
• New wagons to be replaced by new ones
• To invest in improving infrastructure around railway stations
• Wooden seats to be replaced by cushioned ones in ordinary class passenger trains from next fiscal.
• Unreserved compartments in new trains to be increased from four to six
• Freight revenues up 17 per cent, passenger revenues increase 14 per cent in April-December 2006