SWR to take up several works to handle addln traffic

Hubli, July 14 (UNI) The South Western Railway (SWR) proposed to take up several works to handle the additional traffic, its General Manager Triloknath Perthi informed today.

Addressing a press conference after releasing the new railway time table here, he said the works included doubling of the main arterial routes from Bellary to Londa and providing an alternate route or doubling the ghat section between Londa-Kulem to Vasco with the options of Hubli-Ankola new line or a new alignment from Gunji to Kulem.

He said it was also proposed to complete gauge conversion of the Hassan-Mangalore project along with all ancillary requirements. The main portion was aleady completed and traffic being moved.

He said expansion of terminals, especially at Jindal Vijayanagar Steels Ltd, Torangallu and in Goa area would be taken up, besides completing the Kottur-Harihar new line for traffic to Mangalore and providing line capacity inputs on the saturated sections.

Mr Perthi said SWR had loaded 38.05 MT of freight traffic and registered a 20 per cent growth in originating loading in 2005-06 over the previous year's loading of 31.74 MT. In the current year, it had loaded 10.615 MT up to June compared to 9.265 MT loaded during the corresponding period in 2005.

The SWR had in all earned Rs 1,931.19 crore during 2005-06, including Rs 1220.94 crore from originating freight traffic, a growth of 58 per cent over the previous year. In the current year, till June it had earned 581.69 crore compared to Rs 447.21 crore during the corresponding period the previous year, an increase of 30.07 per cent.

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