Railways facing shortage of 2,000 wagons daily | |||
|
|||
It needs them for carrying coal, causing strain on its ambitious target of transporting 1.18 billion tons freight this year.
Taking note of the prevailing situation, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhuexpressed his concern during a recent meeting and asked the directorate concerned to do the needful so that coal transportation was not hampered. The meeting was called on May 14 to draw a roadmap for increasing the wagon availability for goods transportation. There is a wagon crisis and the issue is being addressed, said Railway Board Member (Traffic) Ajay Shukla. Railways needs an additional 17,000-18,000 wagons annually to meet the growing demand. Of this, 5,000-6,000 are being met through its own capacity and 10,000-12,000 through external procurement. It has been decided to expedite the finalisation of the new tender for procurement of 6,000 wagons, said a senior Railway Ministry official, who attended the meeting. According to the practice, the Railways assesses the requirement of wagons and places demand for new wagons every year as augmentation of freight stock is a continuous process. However, at the moment, the wagon procurement from the market is running a year behind schedule. While no tender has been issued for 2014-15, the order for 9,000 wagons issued in the last fiscal was that of financial year 2013-14 and the procurement is still in the process. He said the wagon shortage has reached this stage because of inadequate ordering in recent years and blamed financial crunch for this inordinate delays in wagon procurement. Prabhu had announced in the Rail Budget that the freight traffic would grow from 1,101 million tons (MT) in 2014-15 to 1,186 MT in 2015-16, an increase of 85 MT. Of the additional tonnage of 85 MT, 42 would be accounted for by coal, which is the largest component of the railways' freight commodity, while 9 MT would come from iron ore and 7 MT from cement traffic. With an average wagon life of about 30 years, railways has a wagon fleet of 2.43 lakh wagons, of which about 1.4 lakh wagons are box-type that are usually used to carry coal. Many wagons also get damaged during mechanised loading/ unloading due to improper practices adopted by some of the sidings. "The damaged wagons get held up in workshops due to capacity constraints," the official said. In order to tide over the crisis, it has been decided to delay the junking of old wagons and the periodic overhauling of wagons is also being postponed. Railways has wagon investment schemes that allow customers to invest in rolling stock and get some freight discount, among other benefits, over a long period of time. There have been investments by petroleum product companies, mining firms and cement firms in such schemes. According to the official, Coal India is likely to make a considerable investment for procurement of railway wagons for carrying coal. |
Sunday, May 17, 2015
9:08 PM
c.sunish
No comments
Related Posts:
Wardha-Nanded rail line project gets special status The Railway Ministry has granted 'special project' status to the much-awaited new rail line between Wardha and Nanded districts via Yavatmal stretching over 284 kms, a senior official here said. By: PTI | Yavatmal(maha) | … Read More
A railway officer who lays the tracks for education K. MANIKANDAN REALISING DREAMS:Ajeet Saxena (centre) with some of the young people from Maharashtra he has helped pursue higher education. —Photo: Special Arrangement He helps fulfil the educational aspirations of… Read More
Diamond Quadrilateral project of Indian Railways High speed rail plans accelerate By Suchanda Banerjee Posted On : July 22, 2016 in News - India & You , Tourism , Kolkata Bullet trains in India – How feasible will they be? (P.C.: wikimedia) Indian Railway plans … Read More
Many trains detained SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT Seven express trains suffered detention of one hour to three hours after some locomotive pilots staged a “work-to-rule” protest on Thursday. Railway sources said that the down trains bound for so… Read More
Talgo tilting train to reduce commuting time between Bengaluru, Mysuru SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT Travel time between Bengaluru and Mysuru could be reduced to 90 minutes in the near future if trials with a high speed, tilting train manufactured by Spanish manufacturer Talgo conducted between Del… Read More
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment