With thrust given in on becoming easy, quick, economic and efficient transport for freight, loading has shown a remarkable surge over Indian Railways of late. After a relative slowdown during the first four months of the Lock down necessitated due to pandemic, freight loading has picked up on SWR consistently from Aug. 2020. The zone has been steadily loading over 3.0 Million Tonnes every month since then.
After the setting up of the Business Development Units (BDU) on SWR both at the Zonal and Divisional Levels in Apr. 2020, the freight loading has picked up. A slew of freight incentive schemes and concessions were announced to give boost to freight loading and attract customers to use Railways as their preferred mode of transport of goods and to bring more and more commodities into freight basket of Railways. Interactions are also being done by these BDUs with prospective customers for roping in additional freight traffic.
During this financial year, SWR has loaded 19.51 million tonnes of freight up to Oct 2020. In spite of the restrictions due to the pandemic, SWR has so far loaded 5.035 Million Tonnes of Coal to ensure uninterrupted power generation for the plants in Karnataka. The Zone continued to load Hot Rolled Coil Steel from the steel plants and 4.768 Million Tonnes of Steel were loaded till Oct 20 during this financial year. Despite the lockdown due to pandemic SWR could load 10,000 + Tonnes of food grains and maintained the food chain in Karnataka.
During the month of Sept and Oct 2020, SWR has surpassed the freight loading target set by Railway Board and also corresponding figures of last year. During the month of Sept 2020, SWR has loaded 3.03 Million Tonnes of freight which is 4.48 % more that the corresponding period of last year. Similarly during the month of Oct 2020, SWR has loaded 3.22 Million Tonnes of freight which is 8.61% more that the corresponding period of last year.
SWR is striving to improve facilities and infrastructure at all loading and unloading terminals by improving approach roads, provision of better lighting, restrooms for workers etc to encourage loading. Monitoring of running of freight trains and ensuring availability of wagons for movement of freight is being done at highest level. The Zone has been able to achieve turnaround in loading duly observing all Covid related protocols like social distancing, wearing of face masks etc.
The highlight of this year’s freight loading is a quantum jump in the transportation of automobiles from Dodballapur, Penukonda, Kadakola, Hosur etc. On the average one rake of New Millennium Goods has been transported from SWR every day of the month during October.
