SNAP Time, Speed, Distance and Trains Previous Year Questions

SNAP Time, Speed, Distance and Trains PYQ, free to download as a 36-page PDF. The bank carries 25 solved questions from the 2006 to 2025 papers and takes roughly two days to work through, so split it across average speed and trains.

Questions run newest year first, with the options exactly as printed. The answer key follows, then a worked solution for each one.

SNAP Time, Speed and Distance Weightage

This is the largest single arithmetic topic in SNAP's quant section and the widest in range. The same 25 questions run from a one-line average-speed calculation to a pair of trawlers on perpendicular courses.

2011 to 2015 was the heaviest stretch by some distance, at twelve questions. The topic still appears in recent papers, just less densely than it once did.

What the 25 Questions Cover

• Average speed across legs of unequal length, which appears in four separate papers
• Trains crossing platforms, men and each other, in both the same and opposite directions
• Boats and streams, where the still-water rate is half the sum of the two journey rates
• Races and beats, where a lead in metres converts into a ratio of speeds
• Late-and-early problems, where two arrival errors bracket one scheduled time
• Meeting problems, including one where the travellers start two hours apart

How to Approach the Set

Average speed is total distance over total time, never the average of the individual speeds. It sounds obvious and it is the most common error in the topic.

For trains, the fact that unlocks nearly every platform question is that passing a standing man covers only the train's own length. Speeds add when two bodies move in opposite directions and subtract when they move the same way.

Over a fixed distance, speed and time are inversely proportional, so four-fifths the speed means five-fourths the time. And late and early add together, because they sit on opposite sides of one scheduled time. Where a pair of journeys turns awkward, substituting hours per kilometre for speed usually makes it linear.

When None of the Options Is Right

One question resolves to "none of these" and its arithmetic is worth following closely. A train breaks down after 150 km and continues at three-fifths speed, arriving 8 hours late. Had the breakdown happened 360 km farther along, it would have been only 4 hours late.

Running at three-fifths speed multiplies the time by five-thirds, so the delay is two-thirds of the normal running time for the remaining stretch. The two conditions give 870 km, against options of 780, 880 and 720.

Common Mistakes

• Averaging the individual speeds instead of dividing total distance by total time
• Reading "one-third of the remainder" as one-third of the whole journey
• Treating late and early as a difference rather than a sum
• Inverting the wrong way, so four-fifths the speed is taken to give four-fifths the time
• Scaling the combined length of two trains when only one of them grew longer

Two to Solve First

The 2018 question asking which train is further from Chennai. A fast train and a slow train leave opposite ends at the same moment and meet somewhere along the route. The speeds decide where they meet, but at that instant both occupy the same point, so neither is further. It rewards reading the question rather than reaching for a formula.

Then the 2019 question pitting a constant walker against an accelerating one, at a steady 8 km/hr against 4 km in the first hour, 5 in the second and so on. Setting the linear distance plus the arithmetic series equal to the 144 km gap gives a quadratic that resolves cleanly at nine hours.

Video Solutions

Source: MBA Pathshala

Using the Answer Key

Attempt the whole set before checking anything, allowing about ninety seconds each. Mark the key in one pass, right or wrong only, then read the solution for every miss and every lucky guess. Each opens with a one-line quick solution you can stop at and retry from.

For the rest of the section, the SNAP Averages, Mixtures and Alligation PYQs and the SNAP Permutations, Combinations and Probability PYQs cover the other repeated quant topics.