Hyderabad: South Central Railway steals show with freight trains record

Hyderabad: The sustained efforts of SCR combined with the policy initiatives such as tariff and non-tariff concessions resulted in the zone recording the third-best average speed in the freight train movements across the Indian Railways in September.

The zone recorded an overall loading of 7.56 MT during the month of September 2020 compared to an overall loading of 7.51 MT recorded during September 2019. Significantly, the growth rebound in loading has been across the spectrum with all commodities witnessing higher loading levels (except Coal) in the month of September 2020 compared to the same period last year.

The policy initiatives for the cement sector –relaxations in the mini rake loading, tariff concession for long-lead traffic and relaxing train load benefits norms among others – combined with the active canvassing by the operating and commercial teams have contributed to the cement loading increase by 29% to 2.2 MT in September 2020 compared to 1.7 MT in September 2019.

Similar growth trends were also witnessed in other commodities as well, 26% growth in loading of raw material commodities for steel plants (0.24 MT in Sep 2020 Vs 0.19 MT in Sep 2019), 14% growth in the loading of Petroleum products (0.032 MT in Sep 2020 Vs 0.028 MT), 22% growth in Containers loading (0.11 MT in Sep 2020 Vs 0.09 MT in Sep 2019) and 9% growth in the loading of other commodities (0.36 MT in Sep 2020 Vs 0.33 MT in Sep 2019), said, a senior officer of SCR In addition, running the freight trains at a much higher speed has facilitated a lot in enhanced freight loading.

The average speed of the freight trains was drastically improved by 97%i.e., from 26 kmph in September 2019 to 51 kmph in September 2020. In fact, South Central Railway has recorded the third best average speed in the freight train movements across the Indian Railways.