Rly Drive To Hike Freight Carrying Capacity

The ministry of railways has launched a drive to reduce terminal detentions and turnaround time of wagons. The idea is to increase the freight carrying capacity by 50 per cent through continual usage of wagons.

The detention time of wagons at terminals ranges between 18-30 hours. We have initiated a policy to reduce this to five to six hours. We also want to reduce the time lag between two loadings, Shanti Narayan, member-traffic in the ministry told Business Standard.

The time lag between two loadings has decreased from 14 days in the 1980s to 11 days in early 1990s and now to eight days making it possible to use the wagons more efficiently. Annual incremental loading has risen by 20 million tonnes over the past three years, despite a decline in the number of wagons available for use.

 

Our focus has shifted from monitoring the movement of wagons to monitoring rakes. Instead of keeping a tab on 4.5 lakh wagons, we now have to monitor the movement of about 4,000 rakes thus ensuring that we get the best out of our assets, Narayan explained.

A rake has either 145 box wagons or 100 covered wagons. A merry-go-round system has been introduced to ensure that rakes travel along circular or triangular routes. About 250 of the 800 box wagon rakes have been put on these closed circuit routes.

A major dent would have to be made in the area of terminal arrangements. Today, rolling stock at loading and unloading stations suffer heavy detentions leading to sub-optimal utilisation of already scarce resources. We are trying to ensure that wagons do not get delinked from locomotives. The merry-go-round concept in movement of coal from pit-heads to power stations in specially designed bottom-discharge hopper wagons would have to be extended to all major freight streams of traffic, Narayan said.

We are trying to apply this strategy to the movement of petroleum, oil and lubricants container traffic, as well as of raw material supplied to the fertiliser, cement and other industries.

This would necessitate a significantly higher allocation for procurement of locomotives and investments in terminals to secure greater mechanisation, he said.

Examination of wagons for technical flaws are being cut down to reduce delays in their movement and enhance usage. Examinations will now take place at the terminal points after a train has travelled 4,500 kms. Under the new policy, a rake leaving Bhilai would pass through Korba and Nasik before returning, where it will be inspected for maintenance purposes.

We are trying to earmark entire rakes along with locomotives to specific terminals to develop a sense of belonging towards the assets among the maintenance staff. A terminal will know exactly which wagons and rakes belong to it and will take special care of it, Narayan said.