The Hindu Business Line : Eastern Railway upbeat

EASTERN Railway, operating in a congested route corridor traversing the three eastern States of West Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand, expects to improve on the performance highs of 2004-05, both on the passenger and freight fronts.

The railway, in a phased manner, will be switching over from individual coach attention in workshops to full rake attention, adopting the `rake-in and rake-out' system, which will reduce the shunting in maintenance yard, and also help maintain integrity of the rake composition over a longer period of time. In 2004-05, the ER added some 3,458 new coaches.

The zonal railway has also chalked plans to augment coaching capacity, decongest both Howrah and Sealdah stations through new platforms and entry and exit gates (at Seadah) in the immediate term, and gradually move towards a Universal Ticketing System, besides adding to other passenger amenities such as food plazas and rest rooms at stations. Automatic ticket vending machines for low denomination tickets are being installed at both Howrah and Sealdah stations soon.

The railway, which intends to run longer trains (12-coach) in the suburban section, has planned capital expenditure of Rs 250 crore on all these in the current financial year. The ER runs more than 1000 train per day, and the Kolkata Passenger Reservation System is the largest network in the country with 358 locations (as on March 31, 2005). Non-Rail heads such as Port Blair, all capitals of North Eastern States etc are also connected. Some 136 special trains were run by the ER last year.

Addressing a press conference here on the occasion of release of ER's new timetable, for both long distance and suburban trains, Mr Shyam Kumar, General Manager, said the targeted freight and passenger earnings for the current year were at Rs 1,377 crore and Rs 950 crore respectively.

In 2004, the ER had achieved earnings of Rs 1,130 crore and Rs 893 respectively, with sundry earnings at Rs 140 crore. An all-time-record loading of 42.3 million tones was achieved last year, and the plan is to achieve a 10 per cent increase this year at 50 MT.

Among the Railways's on-going projects is a new coal loading plant at Pakur, promising up to 2 MT of additional loading capacity.

Sounding upbeat on the freight front, Mr Kumar said he was hopeful of higher originating freight earnings.

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