The Indian Railways accepted deliveries of 16,638 wagons in 2010-11, which is the highest number of wagons ever procured in a year by the Railways. The wagons were procured at a cost of about Rs 3,500 crore.

The wagons were procured from companies including Texmaco, Titagarh, Besco, Modern, HEI, and public sector units.

In 2010-11, the Ministry placed orders for procuring 19,000 wagons.

Apart from these, it also has outstanding orders for 12,000 wagons, which were placed before fiscal 2011.

“The number of wagons procured, which is the higher ever in a year, is about 25 per cent more than that in the previous fiscal,” Mr Sanjiv Handa, Member-Mechanical, Indian Railways, told reporters here on Monday.

HIGHER WAGON CAPACITY

A large number of these wagons have a higher payload, which are likely to result in freight earnings for the Indian Railways.

“A large number of these wagons have a pay-to-tare ratio of over three. Earlier, bulk of our wagons had a pay to tare ratio of 2.8,” Mr Handa said.

Pay-to-tare ratio is the total payload divided by dead weight of a rolling stock.

Also, the Railways have started procuring more of wagons that require lower maintenance. “Lower maintenance translates into less downtime due to maintenance requirement. These wagons are safer,” Mr Handa added.

He also said that ten years ago, the Railway Reforms Committee had recommended procurement of such wagons.

The technologically-upgraded wagons cost about Rs 30 lakh each including the cost of steel.

For the wagons of improved features, the Railways paid about 2-3 per cent higher than the usual cost.

According to rough estimates of at 67-tonne of payload capacity a wagon, the procurement translates into 1.13 million tonne capacity addition in available rolling stock.

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