RailEnquiry

KOLKATA :  Bhubaneswar-based East Coast Railway (ECoR) tops among all zonal railways in incremental freight loading. Till December, ECoR’s incremental loading was 8.37 million tonnes (mt) on a total loading of 95.53 mt; followed by Secunderabad-based South Central Railway, 6.1 mt on 80.52 mt; and Hajipur-based East Central Railway, 5.78 mt on 73.78 mt. Bilaspur-based South-East Central Railway (SECR), the country’s largest freight-loading zonal railway by volume, reported virtually no increase in loading during the period. SECR’s throughput till December at 110.6 mt was up by 0.3 mt year-on-year.Coal accounts for 55 per cent of ECoR’s total loading and till December ECoR’s coal loading was 57.7 mt, comprising 29.5 mt of domestic coal and 28.2 mt of imported coal as compared with 48.8 mt (24.4 mt of domestic and 24.4 mt of imported) in the year-ago period. The coal-loading target for the whole year has been set at 80 mt. In 2011-12, coal traffic was 68.1 mt. Barring unforeseen developments, ECoR is confident of exceeding its overall freight-traffic target of 130 mt for the fiscal to reach 132 mt. In 2011-12, ECoR’s total freight traffic was 120.77 mt against the target of 120.5 mt. Last Friday, domestic coal loading at Talcher reached 39 coal rakes, highest ever daily loading, surpassing the previous best of 36 in July last year. Average daily loading so far this month has been 34 rakes and in December it was 32.6 rakes. ECoR sources attributed the increase in coal loading to improved availability of coal and coal rakes, proper area control and monitoring, empowering the locomotives and reducing the idle time, on the whole overall system improvement. “We’ve achieved this level loading despite suspension of loading at Deulbera (Odisha), one of the loading points, since October,” a source said. “However, the biggest challenge is how to sustain this level of loading during the remainder of the current fiscal”.