HYDERABAD: The electric loco shed of the South Central Railway at Lallaguda in Secunderabad will be expanded to enable it to handle 225 locomotives (engines) for maintenance and complete overhauling of passenger and goods trains.
At present, the ELS is handling about 200 locomotives. The proposal on expansion, to cost about Rs 16 crore, has been submitted to the Railway Board and, when taken up, the work will be completed in a year’s time, Secunderabad divisional railway manager Ashesh Agarwal has said.
The Kazipet electric and diesel loco shed will also be expanded to enable it to handle 175 locomotives. Now, it is handling 150 locomotives.
Agarwal, along senior divisional electrical engineer and head of ELS K Tourya and SCR chief public relations manager M.Umashankar Kumar took mediapersons on a tour of the facility here on Tuesday and explained about the functioning of the workshop.
The ELS, constructed at a cost of Rs 25 crore with initial handling capacity of 72 railway engines, completed 20 years of operation.
Agarwal said the Lallaguda shed was adopting the best practices to maintain locomotives with a meagre manpower of 3.02 persons per loco as on November 1 as against an all-India average of 3.68.
“Locomotives are periodically maintained as per the time frame. Within 90 days of a locomotive being brought to the shed, it is fully checked and repaired and dispatched on the same day. Again, after 18 months, the locomotive is brought to the shed for major overhauling which takes about six days and complete periodic overhauling is done every 10 years,” Agarwal explained.
The shed takes care of Wide Area Passenger (WAP) of 88 locomotives and Wide Area Goods (WAG) of 112 engines. A locomotive which comes for maintenance and modification is received and dispatched by the PPO section.
Other sections like machine shop, traction motor, bogie, auxiliary machines, electronics, general, SPM, TFP, pneumatic, technical tool room and store also paly their part in the maintenance of a locomotive.
The DRM said the Secunderabad division stood fifth in cargo loading and eighth in having originating passengers.
“It is the only division of Indian Railways to be among the top eight in both categories,” he claimed.
Till November in 2015-16 the division loaded 43.6 tonnes of freight as against 41.6 tonnes last year (4.8 pc increase). Its earnings from freight went up 21 pc.
It earned Rs 844 crore from passenger traffic as against 796 crore last year, an increase of 6 pc.
sec’bad route map
Area: TS, AP, K’taka, M’rashtra
Length: 1,366 route km
Stations: 142