BHUBANESWAR: Indian Railways is set to introduce the first ever aluminum freight rake on Sunday. Union Minister for Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw will flag off India’s first freight train with aluminum rake at Bhubaneswar station.The aluminium rakes will promote the country’s ambitious plan to modernise freight transportation on a fast-track basis and will enable large carbon savings for the Railways.
East Coast Railway (ECoR) sources said the aluminum freight rake is a significant milestone in the modernisation drive in mass transportation as switching to aluminium will significantly reduce carbon footprint. The railway rake made of aluminium will save 1,500 tonne of carbon emissions a year. A single rake can save over 14,500 tonne of CO2 in its lifetime.
As per an estimate, if five per cent of the 2 lakh railway wagons that the Central government plans to introduce are of aluminium, around 15 million tonne of carbon emissions can be saved in a year. Especially designed for freight loading, the coaches have automatic sliding plug doors and are equipped with a pneumatically retractable roller floor system with locking arrangements for easy handling.
The gleaming rakes are 180 tonne lighter than existing steel rakes and can carry five per cent (pc) to 10 pc more payload, consume less energy with relatively negligible wear and tear to rolling stock and rails.The decision to introduce the state-of-the-art rakes made of aluminium in the ECoR seems to have been taken as the zonal railway has the record of the highest freight loading for the consecutive three years.
The zone handled 232.13 million tonne of freight in 2021-22 and earned `23,012.32 crore from freight traffic which is also the highest among other zonal railways.“The aluminium rakes will also improve the logistics efficiency of transportation and accelerate India’s decarbonisation journey. The use of the new rakes will help increase the operational speed of freight trains,” said a railway spokesperson.