The Hindu Business Line : Southern Rly sees increased cement traffic

A large volume of cement traffic has got diverted to rail from road in the south following the introduction of various wagon incentive schemes in the last two years by Indian Railways, according to Southern Railway (SR) sources.

The SR increased its cement handling by nearly 45 per cent last fiscal, and the trend continued this year also.

During 2003-04, the zonal railway handled 1.87 million tonnes of cement. This increased to 1.89 million tonnes in 2004-05 and improved to 2.719 million tonnes in 2005-06, the source said.

From April to August this year, SR handled 1.24 million tonnes of cement. This was a 45-per-cent increase over the corresponding period last year.

The increase was possible despite no new cement manufacturing unit was added in the south. The major cement manufacturers in the South are India Cements and Madras Cements.

Piece meal scheme

According to the source, the increase in cement handling was possible due to availability of wagons under piece meal scheme wherein manufacturers can take a minimum of 10 wagons. Earlier, the manufacturers could avail themselves of a full rake of 40 wagons with a full capacity of 2,400 tonnes.

"It was take it or leave it system," the source said. However, in the last two years, manufacturers or anybody from the trade were allowed to take fewer wagons.

This attracted a large volume of cement traffic through the SR.

The source said there was no shortage of wagons in SR since there was a large quantity of inward traffic into the zonal railway. For instance, a large quantity of foodgrain comes to Tamil Nadu and Kerala from northern region. Also, iron ore comes in huge quantity from Bellary and Hospet. These wagons were available for return load, the source said.

For fiscal ending March 2007, the SR was likely to handle around 30 million tonnes compared with 27.5 million tonnes during 2005-06. Last year was a bounty for SR, which saw a 57-per-cent growth in traffic over the preceding year's volume of 18 million tonnes.

The reasons for only a marginal increase in cargo traffic this year was due to lesser volume of coal and diversion of petroleum products through pipeline, the source said.

In addition to the regular traffic, the SR is moving metre gauge coaches to northeastern region, the source said.