The Hindu Business Line : Railways improves freight earnings by Rs 3,000 cr

The real story of the Indian Railways during 2005-06 has been its impressive freight loading performance. As against a targeted Rs 33,480 crore of freight revenues, the Railways has garnered Rs 36,490 crore, as per the revised estimates for the current fiscal. How has it managed to raise this extra Rs 3,000 crore?

One reason for this is, of course, the general economy buoyancy, leading to higher demand by user industries. But equally important, say officials, are the steps taken to utilise the existing rolling stock better to transport more volume of goods. It started in late 2004, when the Railways experimented with higher wagon axle loads of 22.9 tonnes on select routes, as against the earlier norm of 20.32 tonnes. During 2005-06, this strategy was extended to virtually all iron ore and coal routes. As a result, the carrying capacity for BOX-N wagons used for moving coal went up from 60 tonnes to 70 tonnes, while that for BCN wagons (used for transporting cement), it was increased to 63 tonnes from 58 tonnes.

"This year, we will try out 25-tonne axle load trains on two freight routes: Dallirajhara to Bhillai and Daitari to Banspani. This will improve throughput of our wagons, and meet the higher demand for freight transportation. Increasing capacity through building new lines and additional wagon acquisition would after all take its own time," the official pointed out.

The second strategy has been to bring down the average time between successive loadings for wagons. The Railways had a wagon turnaround of 15.2 days in 1980-81, which has been coming down to 7.47 in 2000-01, 7.16 days in 2001-02, 6.99 days in 2002-03, and 6.72 in 2003-04. "In 2005-06, we achieved a record low turnaround time of 5.5 days", he added.

The result of these has been to effectively increase the Railways' loading capacity by 100 million tonnes and generate some Rs 5,000 crore in freight revenues with the existing wagon stock. "With an increase of one tonne in loading capacity of a wagon, our total capacity for the year goes up by one million tonnes," the official said.

For 2006-07, the Railways has budgeted total freight earnings of Rs 40,320 crore and load 726 million tonnes of goods. Meanwhile, encouraged by the demand for rail freight, the Minister, Mr Lalu Prasad, has announced an increase in the capacity of his cherished wheel manufacturing plant at Chappra (Bihar) from 50,000 to 100,000 per year.

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