The Railway Board has urged railway zones to create additional infrastructural facilities for maintaining the 7014 electric locomotives to be inducted on Indian Railways (IR) over the next five years (at the rate of approximately 1400 locos per annum).
The move for these additional locomotives follows IR’s decision to meet its future peak freight demand of 3000 million tonnes per annum by 2027.
The increase in number of locomotives is as per a report by a multi-disciplinary committee set up by IR to prepare road map for future peak freight demand.
Strategy
In a letter to General Managers of all zones, the Railway Board said that a conventional approach with a business as usual scenario of 4.1 per cent compounded annual growth rate wasn’t sufficient to achieve the 3000 million tonne freight target by 2027.
Outlining the strategy to achieve the target the Board asked zones to undertake network expansion/augmentation and upgradation works to improve the carrying capacity of 3000 MT + 20 per cent .
The Board also urged zones to do commensurate augmentation of its rolling stock fleet (locomotives and wagons) in sync with the above mentioned target.
IR plans to build these 7014 freight locos on priority at its production units (Dahod, Banaras, Chittaranjan and Patiala).
