Mango and Cattle Special Trains Uncertain After Losses, Railway Officials Say

Since 2020 Bangladesh Railway had run a Mango Special Train each season to carry mangoes cheaply from Chapainawabganj and Rajshahi to Dhaka. In May 2025 West Zone Railway officials told Jago News that, after losses in previous years and weak interest from growers and traders, whether the Mango and Cattle Special trains would run that year had become largely uncertain.

Ahsan Ullah Bhuiyan, chief operating superintendent of West Zone Railway in Rajshahi, told Jago News the two trains were more likely not to run that year. He said running the train had become uncertain because traders and growers had not shown the interest in booking mangoes that the railway needed.

Hasina Khatun, the divisional transport officer in Paksey, told Jago News that the Mango and Cattle Special trains had been discussed at a meeting, but West Zone Railway had said nothing further since. She could not say whether the trains would run.

Bhuiyan pointed to luggage vans as an alternative. Every intercity and mail train bound for Dhaka has one, he said, and growers and traders could send mangoes from Chapainawabganj and Rajshahi to Dhaka cheaply in them if they wished.

Two days earlier, on 23 May, Sujit Kumar Biswas, West Zone Railway's chief commercial officer, told Risingbd.com that the railway's experience with the Mango Special had not been good because growers were not keen to send mangoes by it. No decision had been taken yet, he said; a field survey was under way and the train could run if growers and traders were interested. The report said growers and traders were put off by the trouble of getting to and from stations.

At a seminar on mango transport in Rajshahi in May 2024, officials said the fare for carrying a kilogram of mangoes to Dhaka was Tk 1.47 from Chapainawabganj and Tk 1.43 from Rajshahi. That season the train was to leave from Rohanpur station in Chapainawabganj and travel to Dhaka over the Padma Bridge.

Citing West Zone Railway figures, Jago News reported that the Mango Special earned Tk 48 lakh 29 thousand 140 over the five years from 2020 to 2024, while fuel for running it on the Chapainawabganj-Dhaka route cost Tk 92 lakh 91 thousand, a loss it put at about half a crore taka over five seasons. A year earlier, in May 2024, Bangla Tribune had reported railway figures showing that the train carried 3,995 tonnes of mangoes from 2020 to 2023, earning Tk 46 lakh 29 thousand 140, with a loss of Tk 46 lakh 61 thousand 860.

The same Bangla Tribune report gave a year-by-year record: in 2020 the train ran for 46 days and carried 1,200 tonnes; in 2021, 2,235 tonnes over 50 days; in 2022, 179 tonnes over seven days; and in 2023, 382 tonnes over 18 days. Mango traders and farmers said at the time that although the train was cheap, the repeated loading and unloading led them to choose road transport and couriers instead.

The railway had also run special trains to carry sacrificial animals cheaply to Dhaka for Eid-ul-Azha. According to Bangla Tribune, 36 cattle and 160 goats were carried on the route in 2022 alongside 179 tonnes of mangoes, and in 2023 two extra wagons were attached to the Mango Special for animals. Jago News reported that no separate cattle train ran in 2024; sacrificial animals were carried in two wagons of the Mango Special Train.

The mango season in Rajshahi was already under way. According to a Risingbd report of 23 May 2025, mangoes were grown on 19,603 hectares in Rajshahi that year, with a production target of 260,006 tonnes. Under the district administration's mango calendar, picking was allowed from 15 May for local Guti mangoes, from 22 May for Gopalbhog and from 30 May for Himsagar and Khirsapat. Umme Salma, deputy director of the Department of Agricultural Extension in the district, said mango production was higher than the year before.

Photo: Tanweer Morshed / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sources: Jagonews24, Risingbd.com, Bangla Tribune