The Hindu Business Line : Rlys willing to electrify Western corridor to get Japanese funding

New Delhi, Jan. 7 Indian Railways has decided to conduct a trial, which could be billed as world’s first experiment to run double stack, 40-feet containers under over head electric (OHE) wire. It is undertaking this trial to accommodate Japanese Government’s demand to have electric traction on the Western link of dedicated freight corridor.

Earlier, Indian Railways had planned to have the Eastern corridor on electric traction and the Western corridor on diesel traction. Western rail link would primarily serve container traffic and Railways wanted to run double stack containers without having to worry about overhead clearances.

However, the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) study team has stressed that the Western corridor of the dedicated rail freight corridor be electrified. The Japanese Government, which is considering a soft loan for the project, had indicated that its unwillingness to finance the project if diesel traction was adopted.

This would be the first test worldwide to run double stack, forty feet unit containers, on flat wagons, on broad gauge tracks.

“Railways is in the process of procuring equipment (pantographs) for the trials to run double stack container trains under higher overhead wire (of 7.1 metre height),” Mr K.C. Jena, Chairman, Railway Board, said.

The trials would be held on a heavy haul route in Orissa (Jhakharpura-Daitari). JICA would also be a part of the trials.

While Indian Railways conducts the trials over the next six months-one year period, the Japanese Government can continue its project appraisal process. “We already have the Cabinet approval to acquire land and conduct the basic designing work for the freight corridor project,” said Mr Jena.

The Board is trying to get approvals for the extent of expenditure they can undertake.

World over (including the US railroads), double stack containers are usually run on diesel traction.

The Chinese Railways are running double-stack containers under the overhead electric wire. However, they use smaller size containers. And they also use well wagons, which are different than the flat wagons used in Indian Railways.

On station modernisation plans, Mr Jena said that they hope to award the New Delhi and Patna railway stations for modernisation by July this year.

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