Central Railway is going overboard with running special coal trains across Maharashtra. In April, it loaded 954 rakes of coal against 799 rakes in April 2021. On a larger scale, the Indian Railways has seen an incremental loading of 5.8 MT in Coal.
On Sunday, VK Tripathi, Chairman and CEO, Railway Board, stated that there is a huge demand for coal transportation though it has not reached a crisis like situation yet.
On Monday, the Indian Railways claimed that they had registered its best-ever performance in the year 2021-22 in freight loading which has been carried forward in April as well. This growth has been fuelled by incremental loading of 5.8 Million Tonne in Coal.
“There is a 20 per cent rise in demand and consumption for coal. We are running coal special trains on priority,” said VK Tripathi on Sunday.
According to railway officials, with the revival of economic activity and reduction in imported coal-based generation due to high international prices of coal, the demand for domestic coal has seen a substantial growth which is being met by railways.
“This is evident from the fact that between September 21’ and March 22’, the Indian Railways increased the loading of coal to powerhouses by 32 per cent. This trend has continued in April as well and the overall coal loading has registered a healthy 11 per cent growth as we loaded a higher quantity of coal. Loading of domestic Coal for power plants has also increased in April with 18.8% growth,” said a senior railway official.
Meanwhile, the Central Railway, which majorly supplies coal to power plants across Maharashtra claim that it did substantially well in April. Their Nagpur division loaded 954 rakes of coal in April 2022 as against 799 rakes in April 2021. The Indian Railways have cancelled nearly 450 long-distance trains for running coal special trains.
The CR achieved its best-ever April freight loading of 7.14 MT this year which is an increase of 14.2% over April 2021 which was 6.25 MT. First time in the history of the Central Railway, iron ore loading started from Balharshah where they loaded 35 rakes of it.
The CR also loaded 66 rakes of automobiles in April as compared to 31 rakes in April last year, 61 rakes of food grains in April 2022 as against 14 rakes in April 2021 and 109 rakes of sugar in April 2022 as against 86 rakes last April.
Likewise in terms of wagons loading, there has been a growth of 9.2% as Indian Railways loaded 66,024 wagons per day as compared to 60,434 last year in April.
