By IANS
New Delhi : Railway Minister Lalu Prasad is undeterred by accusations of overloading railway wagons. He is determined to increase the load further because he believes the railways’ loading capacity is still under-utilised, say sources close to him.
“During the British period, freight trains carried a load of over 2,300 tonnes,” said a senior railway official considered a close confidant of the minister.
Later, possibly due to aging rails, the total load factor of a goods train was brought down to 2,240 tonnes with a maximum of 40 wagons. The previous railway minister increased the total tonnage of goods trains to 2,440 tonnes. After this, the railways added two more wagons to freight trains, raising the number of wagons to 42 and total tonnage to 2,600.
This is not the end. “The total tonnage is targeted to be increased to 2,730 tonnes,” said the official.
According to him, this will be achieved by increasing the number of wagons in a freight train to 58. At the same time, the design of covered wagons has also been modified to hold 65 tonnes instead of the existing 58 tonnes, he added.
Similarly, the capacity of passenger compartments has also been increased. Against 67 passengers earlier, the air-conditioned three-tier sleepers now carry 78 passengers, and air-conditioned two-tier sleepers carry 54 against the earlier 42 passengers, he said.
Asked about the possible wear and tear of rails, sleepers and fishplates that bear the load of passing trains, the railway official said, “Necessary steps have been taken to secure tracks for the safe running of trains”.
According to him, the British during their reign in India used rails with a tensile strength of 75-90 pounds, which worked out to around 38-40 kg per metre. Now the Railways are laying tracks with 60 kg per metre tensile strength. “Our gauge is wider than Western trains and yet we are running smaller and lighter trains. What is the logic in that?” he asked.
The railways claim that they will overshoot targets set for 2007-08 by the ministry in the budget. The fourth year of Lalu Prasad Yadav as railways minister will be the best in the 154-year history of Indian Railways, claimed officials close to him.
Senior officials said, “All our targets for the current financial year will be exceeded. Our growth in passenger, freight, parcel and sundry earnings are all going to be in double digits,” said the Lalu confidant.
“In the first 14 days of September alone, the freight revenue has grown by 14 percent,” he claimed.
“In recent months there was some slow down in freight traffic because of some inherent problems in coal, cement and iron and steel industries. These problems have been sorted out and freight traffic has been restored to its normal growth,” he added.