The Hindu Business Line : Pvt box train operators keen to step up operations in eastern region

The private container train operators are keen to step up their operations in eastern region. An indication in this regard was given by them to Mr K.K. Srivastava, Chief Operations Manager of Eastern Railway (ER), at a meeting here on Wednesday.

About half a dozen container train operators and Concor were present.

“Right now, 30 container trains a month, roughly one train a day on an average, are handled in the eastern region and 60 per cent of them by Container Corporation of India (Concor)”, Mr Srivastava later told Business Line, adding, “from today’s discussion, it transpired that it should be possible to handle an additional 15 rakes a month”.

Several routes were identified and these would include Kolkata-Visakhapatnam, Kolkata-Jaipur and Kolkata-Chennai.

Routes identified

There was also a proposal to run container trains between northern region and Bongaon, the last Indian station in North 24 Paraganas district in West Bengal bordering Bangladesh.

Adequate traffic

The one factor which was causing concern was the availability of adequate traffic on both directions.

For example, there would be enough marble slabs to move between Jaipur and Kolkata but special effort, it was felt, would be needed to attract sufficient volume of traffic for the Kolkata-Jaipur leg.

Similarly, cast iron exports, now being routed through Kolkata port, might be shipped through Visakhapatnam port by way of rail bridging between Kolkata and Visakhapatnam. The service to Bongaon would be targeted to boost exports to Bangladesh.

Mr Srivastava exuded optimism over the Eastern Railway achieving the targeted freight traffic of 49 million tonnes in 2008-09, up from 44.8 mt handled in 2007-08.

Of this, the throughput of coal would be about 32 mt (29 mt in 2006-07) and non-coal traffic 17 mt (15.7 mt in 2007-08).

“Eastern Coalfields Ltd has promised to step up their loading to 16.2 mt in 2008-09 over last year’s 14 mt”, he said, pointing out that the bulk of the additional non-coal traffic would come from three items, namely, finished steel, cement and stone.

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Pvt box train operators keen to step up operations in eastern region