Cargo Exp reaches destination 13 hours ahead of schedule

India's first time-tabled goods train Cargo Express, which commenced operation on Wednesday, today reached its destination Bengaluru 13 hours ahead of its scheduled time.
The inaugural freight train commenced from Domestic Container Terminal (Okhla) on June 15 at 3.40 PM on its schedule and reached ICD (inland container depot) at Whitefield in Bengaluru at 12.20 AM today, 13 hours ahead of schedule arrival, said a senior railway official.
The Cargo Express train carrying domestic consignments of ceramic tiles, marble powder, poultry feed, malt, rice, wheat, calcium carbonate, soap stone powder, gram dal, paper and steel tubes was to reach ICD Whitefield as per the scheduled time frame of 70 hours.

But it reached the destination early this morning in 56 hrs 40 mins, he said.
Defining a new age of possibilities through assured transit times of freight trains enabling certainty in keeping up with delivery schedules, two pairs of time tabled container were planned as a pilot initiative for catering to domestic l traffic segment between Delhi and Bangalore and Delhi and Chennai, both of these two cities are a distance of around 2200 km from Delhi.
The scheduled time table train for Tondiarpet (Chennai) also departed from Okhla at 12.30 AM today.

Following the budget announcement, discussions had been held with container train operators for submitting proposals for introduction of time tabled container trains with the objective of attracting incremental volumes of container traffic to rail mode.

Accordingly, two pairs of time-tabled container trains had been proposed by CONCOR to start with, for running in the domestic sector between Delhi and Bengaluru and Delhi and Chennai.
Railways envisages to plan more regular trains through premium paths for all container operators through suitable policy changes.
The running of time-tabled freight trains is envisaged to afford a reliable value proposition to traders, notably in the the domestic traffic sector for transporting steel tubes, food grains, ceramic tiles, polished granite slabs, rubber latex, plywood boards, alloys, electronic goods, chemicals, cars and automobile spares.
CONCOR estimates the volume of containerised traffic in these sectors to improve by 25-30 per cent with the introduction of assured transit time.