In the first quarter of the current fiscal, Bhubaneswar-headquartered East Coast Railway (ECoR) accounted for 49 per cent of the total incremental traffic of the Indian Railways. ECoR thus emerges as the fastest-growing freight-loading zonal railway.

During the period, ECoR handled 37 million tonnes (mt) of originating freight traffic, up from 31.35 mt in the same period last year, marking an incremental traffic of 5.65 mt.

Growth in June

For the Railways as a whole, the freight traffic was 256.31 mt (244.81 mt), or an incremental traffic of 11.5 mt. ECoR posted more than 18 per cent growth against the national average of 4.7 per cent. In June alone, ECoR’s growth was 22 per cent at 12.28 mt (10.04 mt).

Indra Ghosh, General Manager, ECoR, would attribute this to system improvements achieved through a slew of measures entailing strict monitoring and improvement in working.

Ghosh, however, conceded that in terms of actual volume, Bilaspur-headquartered South East Central Railway (SECR) topped among the zonal railways.

To yield results

During the period under review, SECR handled 37.18 mt (32.37 mt), posting a growth of 2.23 per cent. “In July, the performance should be much better as the steps recently initiated will start yielding results,” he observed. Ghosh is also the General Manager of SECR as an additional charge.

During the period, ECoR’s daily average handling of wagons was 6,152, which was more than 300 wagons handled by SECR, he pointed out. In other words, SECR’s wagon utilisation is better, as it handled more cargo with fewer wagons.

>santanu.sanyal@thehindu.co.in

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