Mumbai: The Western Railway (WR), for the first ever, has achieved 100 million tonnes (MT) in freightloading. At 89.91 MT in 2022-23, this is a massive 23.61% growth over the previous year. In 2021-22, WR loaded its best ever of 87.91 MT by breaking its previous record after Seven years (87.29 MT in 2014-15). This year, the milestone has been achieved with still 26 days left in the current fiscal.
WR’s accomplishment is the highest incremental loading among all Zonal Railways till now. The top five zones loading over 100 MT are East Coast Railway (ECOR), South East Central Railway (SECR), South East Railway (SER), East Central Railway (ECR) and South Central Railway (SCR), which are traditionally coal centric zones for freight. WR is the latest entrant in the 100 MT club as well as the first non-coal belt zone with a diversified freight basket.
Until Feb 2023, WR’s contribution was nearly 15% of the overall loading of the Indian Railways. The cumulative freight (Net Tonne Kilometres; NTKMs) increased from 74,967.96 million km in 2021-22 to 95,969.1 million km in the current year, registering a growth of 28.01%. This is because apart from an increase in freight loading, there has been a rise in freight leads which has also increased from 941km in 2021-22 to 973 km in the current fiscal, registering an increase of 3.4%.
A senior official said, “WR has shown exponential growth in the loading of various commodities over the last year. Coal registered a growth of 136.9%, while food grains have seen a growth of 58.02%. Loading of petroleum, oil and lubricants increased 25.40%, fertilizers 16.8%, cement 14.85% and container loading by 7.2%.”
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