Railway authorities had removed window curtains in March 2020 to minimise contact; adopted the blinds after testing many alternatives
Blinds were added after passengers started complaining of exposure to excessive light and poor cooling in the absence of curtains
Window curtains in train coaches removed temporarily last year due to the pandemic won’t return. The Indian Railways has now decided to get roller blinds for all its air-conditioned cars.
Curtains for berths had already been removed in 2018 on the recommendations of an inquiry committee that said they might help spread fires. However, curtains on windows remained to protect passengers from the sun and heat.
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To minimise contact, the railways in March 2020 removed window curtains and stopped providing blankets to passengers. Since then, rail users had been complaining of constant exposure to external light and poor cooling.
After many experiments, the railways installed polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) sheets in one coach of the Howrah-New Delhi AC Special. In this, with the press of a switch, a passenger could make the window glass from transparent to opaque.
While PDLC was effective, officials said, getting it on a mass scale for all trains would have been very expensive. Authorities then decided to use roller blinds in place of window curtains in all AC coaches effective April 1.
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