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Santanu Sanyal

Kolkata , June 30

THE Railway Board has in principle agreed to undertake the electrification of railway sidings of steel plants under Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) as a means to curb detention of wagons in these plants.

This follows the decision of the Board recently to electrify at the Railways' cost major consumers' diesel sidings located on the electrified sections, where heavy detention occurs and a prescribed number of rakes are handled every month.

The Rail Board's decision will immediately benefit at least three units of SAIL at Rourkela (RSP), Bokaro (BSL) and Durgapur (DSP).

The length of the siding, which is equivalent of the distance between the exchange yard and the tipplers/unloading points of the plants, is 6 km for RSP, 7 km for BSL and 5 km for DSP and these distances are not electrified.

The respective zonal railways, following the Rail Board's decision, will now electrify these stretches at their own cost.

Thus, the South Eastern Railway will be responsible for the electrification of the sidings in RSP and BSL and the Eastern Railway in DSP.

At present, heavy detention takes place at exchange yards where the Railways hand over the plant-bound rakes running on electric traction to the respective plant authorities.

The rakes wait for the diesel locomotives of the respective steel plants to arrive at the yard and haul them right up to the tippler or unloading points. As it often happens, after covering the much longer distance on the main railway line at a record time, the rakes take inordinately long time to cover a few kilometres of non-electrified sidings for various reasons. This throws up the problem of congestion and the consequent detention of wagons.

Once the sidings have been electrified, the same electric engines hauling the rakes on the mainline will be able to move right up to the tipplers/unloading points. There will be no need for change of traction, as it is the case now, and therefore, fewer detentions.

However, the Railways has stipulated certain minimum volume of traffic for the sidings to be eligible for electrification. Thus if the distance from the exchange yard to the tippler is up to 5 km, the volume of traffic handled by the siding has to be a equivalent of a minimum of five BoxN/seven BCN rakes per month. If the length of the siding is between five and 10 km, the minimum volume of traffic has to be equivalent of 9BoxN/12 BCN rakes per month.

For a siding with more than 10 km of length, the electrification issue will be dealt on merit of the each case.

The sidings of all the three plants (RSP, BSL and DSP) handle much more than the stipulated minimum volume of traffic and therefore eminently eligible for electrification by the Railways, feel sources close to SAIL.

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