VIJAYAWADA: The South Central Railway (SCR) has won the appreciation of Union Minister for Railways Piyush Goyal for a record performance in the electrification of the track under the zone. Minister of State for Railways Suresh Angadi Channabasappa presented the certificates to SCR General Manager Gajanan Mallya during the regional function of the 64th Railway Week Awards held at Ambala in Haryana recently.
Gajanan Mallya presented a certificate of appreciation in recognition of closing all the unmanned level crossings (UMLCs) to Principal Chief Engineer KV Siva Prasad and certificate of appreciation for record electrification to Principal Chief Electrical Engineer AA Phadke in his chamber on Tuesday. In a press release issued here, the SCR GM said that as on April 1, 2017, the Zone had 288 UMLCs. A policy decision was taken by the Ministry of Railways in 2017 to eliminate all the existing UMLCs.
In this regard, the SCR took up the task on a priority basis and instead of manning all the level crossings (LCs), they took up the work of providing limited height subways (LHS) or road under bridges (RUB) at 180 LC locations.
As the work of providing LHS or RUB on running tracks was a daunting and time-consuming task, innovative methods were adopted to construct these on a fast track mode.
Precast box segments were used and inserted into the track near LC locations by deploying high capacity road cranes of 200 tonnes, he added. Elaborating further, Mallya said that in order to reduce the block time required for insertion of precast boxes, temporary steel girders were inserted beforehand with improved methodology so as to take up earthwork excavation for placing the box segments in position.
During the year 2017-18 and 2018-19, a total of 84 LHS and 96 RUB have been constructed. The remaining UMLCs were eliminated by other modes like manning, direct closure and diversion of traffic to
nearest LCs.
