Visiting General Manager of the Northeast Railways (Construction), NK Prasad, met Chief Minister Pema Khandu here on Thursday evening and informed that the Centre has given the go-ahead for a new railway line from Silapathar (falling in the Rangiya Division of N.F.Railway in Assam) to Aalo, via Bame (West Siang district).

Holding a detailed discussion on railway connectivity with the GM and his team of officials, Pema impressed upon the officials that a railway line to Aalo should be made a priority.

Prasad assured that survey work for the railway line will begin soon, and also informed that another new railway line, from North Lakhimpur to Ziro (Lower Subansiri), has been approved.

The Chief Minister requested the officials to immediately start the survey and investigation works, and assured support and cooperation from the state government.

He further sought the status of other railway lines being proposed in the state.

The officers informed him that survey for three railway lines – Margherita to Deomali (31 km), Lekhapani to Kharsang (25 km), and Itakhola to Seijosa (18 km) has been completed.

Survey for other railway lines is in progress, and includes Doomdooma-Namsai-Wakro (96 km), Dangri-Roing (60 km), Deomali-Naharkatia (20 km), Kharsang-Miao-Nampong-New Kamlang Deban (75 km), and Tinsukia-Pasighat via Simalguri Kanubari (300 km).

The chief minister also discussed the progress of the railway line from Murkongselek to Pasighat (26 km) and Pasighat-Tezu-Parashuram Kund-Rupai.

The officials informed that land acquisition process for Murkongselek-Pasighat has been completed and survey work is in full progress. They also informed that survey work for Pasighat to Rupai via Tezu and Parashuram Kund is also in progress.

The meeting also discussed the Bhalukpong to Tawang railway line that will cut down the existing road distance from 385 km to 165 km when completed.

The chief minister said that once these railway lines become fully functional they will benefit the farmers the most as due to lack of connectivity they are unable to find viable markets.

The Kozhikode railway station in Kerala was ranked the best by travellers while the Hazrat Nizamuddin here was given the lowest ratings in terms of cleanliness, a survey by a app-based travel portal said. It also found that around 40 per cent stations, found cleanest by users, were in the south followed by 20 per cent in central India and the same in the west. Travel app ixigo said that Kozhikode in Kerala was ranked the best station in the country by its users while Hazrat Nizamuddin, which is one of the five main stations in Delhi, has been rated the lowest. Stations that made it to the “best” list include Hubli Junction and Davangere in Karnataka, Dhanbad Junction (Jharkhand), Jabalpur (Madhya Pradesh) and Bilaspur Junction (Chhattisgarh). Vadodara and Rajkot junctions in Gujarat, Falna (Rajasthan) and Vijayawada Junction (Andhra Pradesh) are also on the list.

Some of the stations that received the lowest ratings by travellers include Varanasi and Mathura junctions in Uttar Pradesh, Ajmer Junction in Rajasthan, Bhusaval Junction in Maharashtra and Gaya Junction in Bihar. The portal, ixigo, which works closely with the IRCTC to facilitate train ticket bookings for over seven million users on its app, aggregated the data from them to provide the cleanliness ratings.

Swarna Jayanti Rajdhani has been rated the cleanest train, while the Karnataka Express got the lowest ratings for the same, the data said. In a similar study on cleanliness conducted by the Indian Railways, which was released in 2017, most stations from the south had found a place in the “best” list. The cleanest station last year was Beas on the Jallandhar-Amritsar section of the Northern Railway’s Firozpur Division. It was followed by Vishakhapatnam and Khammam both in Telengana.

Train Running Pattern due to Rail Breakage between Belvandi and Visapur has been in force currently due to rail breakage after the block for construction of subway between Belvandi and Visapur on Daund-Manmad section of Solapur Division on 11.1.2018. As a result, the following mail/express trains are diverted and Passenger trains cancelled over Central Railway:

Express Trains Diverted JCO 11.1.2018

1.    12149 Pune-Danapur Express diverted via Pune-Lonavala-Igatpuri-Manmad
2.    12129 Pune-Howrah Azad Hind Express diverted via Pune-Lonavala-Igatpuri-Manmad
3.    11037 Pune-Gorakhpur Express diverted via Pune-Lonavala-Igatpuri-Manmad
4.    12130 Howrah-Pune Azad Hind Express JCO 10.1.2018 diverted via Manmad-Igatpuri-Lonavala-Pune
5.    02846 Hatia-Pune Special JCO 10.1.2018 diverted via Manmad-Igatpuri-Lonavala-Pune
6.    12150 Danapur-Pune Express JCO 10.1.2018 diverted via Manmad-Igatpuri-Lonavala-Pune
7.    51034 Sainagar Shirdi-CSMT Fast Passenger JCO 11.1.2018 diverted via Sainagar Shirdi-Manmad-Igatpuri-CSMT

Passenger Trains Cancelled

1.    51402 Manmad-Pune Passenger JCO 11.1.2018
2.    51401 Pune-Manmad Passenger JCO 12.1.2018

Lucknow’s Charbagh Railway Station, one of the two main railway stations of the city, will soon receive a makeover just like the International airports.

According to reports, Rs 6,000 crore will be spent by the Indian Railways on the project with a world-class look which is expected to be completed within three years.

Currently, around 110 pairs of coaching that is 220 trains and 33 pairs of goods are handled by this station and in order to meet the increased demand of traffic, a complete revamping of the station has been planned.

A concourse of 9 meters height, which will be approximately 180 meters in length and will cover all the platforms on the station, has been planned.

Kalzip roofing has been planned which will have a retail area, washrooms, waiting area, travelators, polyclinics, food court, shopping area, ATM and drinking water facilities.

In order to handle more traffic through the station, two additional platforms are being made.

As per reports, the outer heritage look of the station will be preserved while the inside part will be transformed completely and will be disabled-friendly as well.

The Charbagh Junction will also be connected to the Lucknow Metro, and will also undergo an expansion.

On 23 April 1867, the 47 mile Lucknow-Kanpur section was opened for the traffic which was a large orchard. The present Lucknow division, in 1925, was part of the East Indian Railway till 1952.

The word ‘Char Bagh’ refers to the four gardens which existed here earlier.

Nearly 450 railway track patrolling teams from the Waltair division of East Coast Railway (ECoR) will get GPS-enabled devices to prevent them from being used by officers as helpers

These devices are particularly used for teams on routes such as Kottavalasa-Kirandul line which passes through dense forest cover, valleys and isolated tribal hamlets.

“Such devices are already being used by other divisions in the country and the Waltair division is going to implement it in a couple of days,” said divisional railway manager MS Mathur. All track men will be given small GPS-enabled machines that cost around Rs 5,000 each, he added.

“We will be able to monitor their work and movement. This apart, we have also decided to reduce the weight of the equipment they carry from 120 kg to 60 kg as part of railway safety,” Mathur said. The equipment mostly include torchlights and hammers that are used for the maintenance works carried out by the workers. carrying such heavy luggage bags is a major health hazard for them.

Addressing the media here on Thursday, Mathur said that nearly Rs 70 crore was spent in the last seven months of his tenure in the division limits for maintenance and completion of the pending works. The amount was particularly spent on the automatic signalling system on specified lines in the division limits.

A new GPS-based system has been installed in all the locomotives of Northeast Frontier (NF) Railway to alert loco pilots about approaching signals and help run trains on schedule during heavy fog.

The equipment called FogPASS (Fog Pilot Assistance System for Safety), comprises an inbuilt battery and GPS antenna with magnetic base, has been installed in all the locomotives in NF Railway, Chief Public Relations Officer (CPRO) Pranav Jyoti Sharma said.
As the train moves, the new equipment will display a short description and the remaining distance of the next two landmarks in geographical order on the LCD screen.

The landmarks include signals of various types and level crossing gates, he said.

When a train approaches a station, the device will flash the distance left between the train and the home signal of that station. If the pilot is unable to physically see the signal, he would be aware of how far the train is from the signal and act accordingly.

There is also a provision of voice announcement in speakers attached with the device for drawing the attention of the drivers, the CPRO said. The new system is proving to be a boon to speed up trains during heavy fog, he said.

The device which weighs 1.5 kg is carried by the loco pilot at the time of assuming charge of the locomotive.

A total of 1101 such devices have already been allotted to locomotives of all divisions.

The railways has also deployed fog-men to place detonators on the tracks to alert the loco pilots about approaching signals, he said.

Senior Railway officials are undertaking night foot plate inspection and track patrolling to detect cases of rail fracture.

The Railways has also provided sufficient walkie-talkie sets to the crew and station staff, besides signal indication booklets to loco pilots.

A woman in China has been fined 2,000 yuan for preventing a high-speed train from leaving the platform so her husband could board it, reports the Shanghaiist. A video of her altercation with the train conductor has gone viral on Chinese social media. The video shows the woman, identified as Luo Haili, standing at the train’s door at the Hefei Railway Station in Anhui Province. She refuses to budge as a conductor tries to persuade her to stop blocking the door and allow the train to leave.

The woman, who insists that the train wait a little longer for her husband, was later taken into custody. The train left the station after that, late by a few minutes.

“I thought the train was stopping at the station for 10 minutes. There were 2 minutes left, is that not enough time to get on the train? My husband only needed 10 seconds to come down, then it would have been no big deal. At the time, wasn’t I only trying to get him come down. Did I do something wrong?” said Luo Haili in an interview later, according to the Shanghaiist.

Her video angered netizens in China who thought a fine of 2,000 yuan (approximately Rs. 19,500) too little. “Do you think that a high-speed train is your own personal car?” asked one Weibo user.

 

In a major boost to infrastructure development, Container Corporation of India (CONCOR) is ready to commission two multimodal logistics parks in Central India, one at MIHAN in Nagpur city and other at Naya Raipur. Member Traffic/Railway Board, Mohd. Jamshed, is to inaugurate the two logistics parks, part of ambitious drive of Central Government to put in place facilities so that when economy makes a turn around they can be put to major use. MIHAN’s multimodal logistic park (MMLP) would be biggest over Central Railway.

While the MMLP at Naya Raipur is complete and custom notification too is going to be out in next fortnight, the one at MIHAN is a soft launch as the cross overs from Khapri stations are not in place as yet, informed A K Satpathy, Chief General Manager, CONCOR, Nagpur Region. He confirmed that MT Jamshed will first inaugurate the MIHAN facility on morning of January 17 and later in Raipur the same evening. The MIHAN and Naya Raipur MMLP are both having identical area, about 120 acres that is quite huge and would tend to both internal as well external bound cargo.

Talking about MIHAN Depot, Satpathy said the cross overs to enable entry and exit of train rakes has to be done by Railways and for it CONCOR has deposited Rs. 55 crore with them. The tender has been awarded and the work is expected to take about eight to nine months after which CONCOR’s MMLP at MIHAN will be commissioned fully. Also the custom certification will take some time till all the facilities like warehousing and storing of inbound materials are in place and till then we will cater to domestic traffic. Till that time a rake or two of open wagons would be able to ply from the MIHAN MMLP, he disclosed.

Nagpur is the logistics hub of central India and a major commercial center. The city is strategically positioned in the middle of the country with all the characteristics that are required to cater to logistics needs of central India and beyond. But what is interesting about Nagpur is that this tier-2 city has three inland container depots (ICDs) – two privately owned and one managed by Container Corporation of India Ltd. (CONCOR). This speaks volumes about the city’s logistical and infrastructural strength. The huge projects undertaken by Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) around Nagpur and the region’s capacity to produce coal, cotton and rice inspired the setting up of three ICDs.

Post laying of loop lines that would enable cross over from depot to mainline and vice-versa, the MMLP here would get fully going then CONCOR would be in position to ship eight to ten rakes as and when there is demand. Here there is also facility of private freight terminal (PFT) through which local business houses can ship small cargo and need not have to book entire rake. The advantage with this depot is that it location outside the city periphery means there would be no restriction on movement of cargo trucks. As to Ajni facility, Satpathy said that thing is exclusively meant for container traffic only whereas one at MIHAN can also have loading of open wagons which are mostly in use over Railways. At Ajni, the restrictions on movement of heavy trucks creates major problem for loaders.

Member Traffic to review Central Railways performance in Nagpur Division

Member Traffic, Railway Board, Mohd. Jamshed is going to review the freight and train operations of Central Railway and especially Nagpur Division during his visit to city on January 16. The visit of MT is quite significant as division now occupies second spot in terms of tonnage transported over Railways during this financial year, which is 55 per cent jump over preceding year. Thus Nagpur Division and Bilaspur Division of South East Central Railway (SECR) now contribute about three-fourth of revenue to Railways through loading. This is the maiden visit of MT to Nagpur Division.

Jamshed is going to be on two day tour of Central India with first stop over at Nagpur and thereafter visit to Raipur. He is being accompanied by a high level team of Board officials including Principal Executive Director, TT (M), ED (Rates), ED (Cord), Director (F&F). The same day during evening, Member Traffic has scheduled a meeting with top officials of Central Railway where he would review the operating performance and also meet with CMD, Western Coalfields Limited (WCL) and discuss the coal loading. Chief Operations Manager (CoM), Chief Commercial Manager (CCM) and Chief Freight and Transport Manager (CFTM) would be coming from CR’s Headquarters to brief MT.

Chairman & Managing Director, CONCOR, V Kalyana Rama, too is arriving from New Delhi for the inauguration of the two MMLP. The inauguration of MIHAN MMLP is at 9 am on January 16 while that of Naya Raipur MMLP at 4 pm the same day.

After wrapping up Nagpur programme, MT is going to proceed to Raipur and on the route he will do window trailing inspection of the section, which is very crucial in terms of loading. Jamshed will fly back to New Delhi from Raipur on evening of January 17, it is learnt. He will be accompanied by top officials of SECR including, CoM, CCM, MD, CONCOR, Sr. Divisional Operations Manager (Sr. DoM) of respective divisions.

After a gap of three years, the Railways may post nearly 5 per cent growth in cargo volume this fiscal, with coal contributing a little less than half of the total volume.

During the first nine months of this fiscal, the Railways carried about 849 million tonnes cargo, registering a 4.8 per cent growth.

According to sources, January-March being the peak period, the trend may gain momentum and the Railways will finish close to the targeted volume of 1,167 mt, against last year’s total of 1,108 mt.

The volume of coal, which contributes 48-49 per cent of the total, increased 2.7 per cent; raw materials for steel plant, except iron ore, increased 6 per cent, and volume of steel cargo had shot up by a staggering 15 per cent.

Revenue grew faster than cargo volume at 8.11 per cent, presumably due to adjustments in tariff. And coal consumers were the biggest casualty as revenues from coal freight increased 10.18 per cent against less than 3 per cent volume growth.

In comparison, steel consumers are less affected. Revenue from steel raw materials, except iron ore, moved up 10.7 per cent faster than the volume growth. However, the growth of revenue from steel products is lower (10.7 per cent) than the volume growth.

Safety vs projects

Railway officials hold this year’s cargo growth as exceptional as it came on a high base and despite poor track capacity.

According to sources in the Railways, better coordination between Coal India and the Railways contributed significantly to this year’s performance.

Loading time

CIL has reduced its loading time in sidings.

To ensure faster turnaround of rakes and higher sales of coal, the Railways was asked to divert rakes to more efficient sidings.

Sources, however, point out that to ensure similar growth in despatches in the days to come, coal consumers have to invest in handling infrastructure.

Power and steel plants currently take eight to 10 hours to unload a rake as against the estimated five to six hours, slowing down the movement.

New projects

Recent slowdown in construction of new projects may also affect cargo growth in the future.

The slowdown is attributed to shift in focus on renewal of old and unsafe tracks, following a string of accidents.

New projects are suffering as rails are diverted to track renewal programmes.

Google is testing paid model of the Google Station programme in Mumbai. The tech giant has installed Wi-Fi at more than 200 stations across India.

But now Google is planning to take charge for the high speed internet service that it provides it these stations. The company is now testing a paid internet service. Users can pay Rs 19 to get unlimited access to the internet for one day valid across a region. A pack of Rs 149 offered by Google will provide unlimited internet access for one week.

The free version of the internet will also be available even after the introduction of paid connections. However, the free connection will offer only 30 minutes of free high-speed internet access with ads appearing on the login page. The internet speed will decreases after 30 minutes of internet usage.

According to reports, it is confirmed that from a Google spokesperson that the search giant is testing a paid internet service in the country.

Google has partnered with RailTel to provide internet across various railway stations across the country. The company is also planning to expand its internet program to other sectors including educational institutions and universities.