The Hindu : Karnataka News : SWR may join the big league in freight traffic

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Nov 05, 2004

Karnataka

Karnataka

SWR may join the big league in freight traffic

By Our Special Correspondent

HUBLI, NOV. 4. At the rate at which freight traffic is growing, South Western Railway is bidding to become one of the top six railway zones in the country as far as the movement of goods goes.

This was stated by S.B. Ghosh Dastidar, General Manager of Central Railway, who is holding additional charge of South Western Railway. He said that the operating ratio of South Western Railway stood at 89, which was better than the all-India average.

Mr. Dastidar told The Hindu here that South Western Railway was recording a 15 to 20 per cent rise in freight movement compared to six per cent at the all-India level.

At the heart of the freight movement was the Hubli Division of South Western Railway, which served the iron-ore-rich Hospet-Bellary area, with the ore being moved to ports in Chennai and Mormugao.

Mr. Dastidar said that the completion of the doubling of the Hospet-Guntakal line would help step up iron ore movement to Chennai.

Initially, the Railways offered the work under the BOLT scheme and later the Karnataka Railway Infrastructure Development Enterprise (K-RIDE) evinced interest in it. But when both failed to materialise, the Railways decided to take up the work with its own funds, Mr. Dastidar said.

Gauge conversion

Efforts were under way to increase the movement of iron ore to the Mormugao port. Converting the rail track into broadgauge and carrying goods through the Braganza Ghats, one of the steepest ghats, had helped matters considerably, and now work was on to commission three railway crossings between Hubli and Londa, which had been given up during the gauge conversion in the interest of keeping up the tempo of the goods traffic to Goa, he said.

South Western Railway had been speeding up the gauge conversion of the Hassan-Mangalore line, which, among other things, would help move around three million tonnes of goods from the Bangalore-Mysore area to Mangalore.

The execution of the Bijapur-Gadag gauge conversion project had suffered for want of funds, he said. The Railways on its own could not finance all the projects. The concept of executing railway projects on cost-sharing basis with other agencies started with CIDCO agreeing to share the cost of a project in Mumbai. Unfortunately, not many States had evinced interest, except for some States such as Jharkhand and Karnataka, he said.

Ticketless travel

Mr. Dastidar said it was planned to put in place in-motion electronic weighing arrangement under which the entire train could be weighed at half-a-dozen places in the zone. The new concept would replace the mechanical weighbridge where only the bogies could be weighed and not the entire train.

He made it clear that the drive against ticketless travel would be continued.

New General Manager

Mr. Dastidar indicated that South Western Railway was likely to get a full-fledged General Manager soon. A decision was likely to be taken in this regard by the month-end by the Railway Board.

South Western Railway has been without a regular General Manager after Rajendra Nath Aga was transferred more than four months ago. G.N. Pant, General Manager of Wheel and Axle Plant, who had been given the additional charge of the post, was moved out in the wake of the discovery of under weighing freight in a surprise check ordered by the Railway Minister, Lalu Prasad, in September.

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