The railways have made it mandatory for a three-hour block every day to maintain tracks and other assets. This is because the railways have substantially increased the Goods and Freight trains plus the long-distance trains which are putting stress on the rail infrastructure. The Central Railway has seen a 30% increase in freight trains until March.
Sources said that this increase in Goods and Freight trains adding to the already running long-distance trains with Summer Special ones have made the rail network very busy. Over the past few months all through the pandemic, the Indian Railways increased more trains on their network, especially those carrying freight.
“We have ensured that each night there is at least 3 hours for maintenance blocks of rail assets. The freight trains carried by us have gone up by almost 30 per cent during this Covid pandemic. And now we have set a target of adding 15-20 per cent in freight loading and transportation in this financial year,” said a senior CR official.
The Central Railway claims that they have achieved the best freight loading for May wherein they transported 7.29 million tonnes (MT) which is an increase of 15.5 per cent more than the corresponding month in 2021 which was 6.32 MT.
“Imported coal loading restarted from Dharamtar port siding of Mumbai Division after a gap of 2 years wherein 9 rakes have been loaded in May 2022,” said a CR official.
The Nagpur Division loaded 899 rakes of coal in May 2022 as against 862 rakes loaded in May 2021 registering a 4.2 per cent increase. The CR loaded 63 rakes of automobiles, 36 rakes of food grains, 125 rakes of sugar and 115 rakes of steel in May 2022 as compared to 20 rakes of automobiles, 11 rakes of food grains, 87 rakes of sugar and 78 rakes of steel in May 2021.
The CR authorities also loaded 2 rakes of Gypsum and 7 rakes of Fly Ash in May 2022 as against nil rakes in May 2021. Apart from this, 55 rakes of Iron ore from Balharshah in Nagpur Division in May 2022 as against nil rakes last year May. They also saw an interchange of Goods trains that increased from 315 trains to 345 trains daily.
The Western Railway loaded and transported 8.68 MT of freight in May this year surpassing the previous best of 8.30 MT in March 2022. They ran 117 Parcel trains between April 1st to June 1st transporting more than 62000 tonnes of commodities and generating revenue of Rs 21.24 crore.
The WR loaded 5,323 wagons per day in May 2022 which is 22 per cent more as compared to the corresponding period last year which was 4362 wagons per day.
They ran 498 Double stack Container trains during the month of May 2022, breaking the previous record of 490 Double stack Container trains in December 2021.
