BHUBANESWAR: East Coast Railway (ECoR) has achieved the 200 million tonne milestone in freight loading to top the zones in the country posting an incremental growth of 15 per cent (pc) compared to the same period in the last fiscal.
ECoR loaded 200.5 MT of freight in 320 days from April 1 to February 14 against 173.82 MT transported in the corresponding period of 2020-21. The railway zone loaded 113.35 MT of coal, 7.06 MT of raw material for steel plants, 18.46 MT of iron and steel, 27.22 MT of iron ore, 1.13 MT of cement, 2.56 MT of food grain, 5 MT of fertiliser and 2.34 MT of petroleum, oil and lubricant (POL) besides 23.37 MT of freight was loaded in containers and other cargo during the period.
The achievement was possible due to the outstanding performance of all the three divisions - Khurda Road, Waltair and Sambalpur. Earlier, 200 MT of cargo was loaded in 366 days in 2019-20 and in 360 days in 2020-21 fiscal. The major contributors of freight are Talcher, Paradip, Dhamara, Visakhapatnam, Gangavaram, Keonjhar, Kothavalasa-Kirandul line, steel plants, aluminium plants and other places of ECoR jurisdiction.
The maximum 132.54 MT of freight was carried from Khurda Road division, 57.21 MT from Waltair and 10.73 MT from Sambalpur. The Khurda Road division utilised 9,452 wagons (174 rakes) per day to transport the freight. The division also surpassed its last year’s annual loading performance of 131.36 MT.
Similarly, Waltair and Sambalpur divisions performed better than the previous year. The ECoR has earned Rs 19,884.3 crore from the freight loading, which is around 20 per cent more than the corresponding period of the last fiscal. Freight loading by ECoR was followed by South East Central Railway (SECR) with 182 MT and South Eastern Railway (SER) with 168.5 MT.
“Despite the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic and slump in demand for export of iron ore, the zone has achieved the feat. Special focus was given to power houses during the coal crisis. The ECoR had also run 44 oxygen special trains towards different destinations of the country during the pandemic,” said a railway official.