Everyone knows about luggage compartment in a EMU popularly called as local trains. However for the first time in 169 year history of Indian Railways, Freight EMUs is being conceptualized. In this Budget, they have sanctioned Rs 1500 crore for developing this freight EMU.
According to senior officials from Rail Ministry, the government has set aside a budget of Rs 200 crore as Capital and another Rs 1300 crore as Extra Budgetary Resources (EBR), which has been mentioned in the Pink Book of Indian Railways. This project is directly being monitored by the Railway Board in Delhi. However they have provided only Rs 1000 - as token amount - as outlay proposed for 2022-23.
As per plans, the Railway Ministry is looking at designing, manufacturing and procuring 25 sets of Freight EMU at a cost of Rs 60 crore per set. "Each set shall comprise of 16-car (coaches). This will be usually longer than than regular EMUs that we see in Mumbai where trains are usually 12-car or 15-car each," said an official from Railway Board.
The rail authorities claim that the plan is still in conceptual stage and lot of work needs to be done on the same. "As an EMU is a self propelled train, it will become easier to carry freight and luggage weighing multi-tonne. We might just have to create coaches that are similar to the existing luggage compartment inside a local train," said another railway official on condition of anonymity.
Primarily the railways might look at the carrying capabilities of a local train which has ferried 4200-4500 people per 12-car train during peak hours as dense crush load, during the pre-pandemic era. Moreover these EMUs can easily run at 100-110kmph unlike a regular freight train hauled by locomotives.
These Freight EMUs might operate on inter-city routes connecting Metro cities with stations where produce - both agricultural and industrial - are produced or manufactured. It could also be used to cater the goods booked on e-commerce websites and Apps and it is transported on short routes covering inter-cities.
