Performance of Railways' electrical assets touches all-time high

New Delhi, Aug 30 (UNI) Minister of State for Railways Naranbhai J. Rathwa today said the the Railways, which achieved a target of freight loading of 728 million tonnes, would succeed in achieving the ambitious target of 800 million tonnes during the current fiscal.

Inaugurating a two-day Conference of Chief Electrical Engineers of all Zonal Railways and Production Units here, Mr Rathwa said electrification of tracks would play a major role in meeting this target.

He said the Electrical Department is the backbone of Railways, constituting about 65 per cent of the freight and about 50 per cent of the passenger traffic.

Appreciating the efforts and contributions of the department, the minister said reliability and availability of the electrical assets had improved in a big way and touched an all-time high.

He said the performance of electrical assets had improved by over by 19 per cent during the period April-July this year, enabling the Railways to haul higher traffic and achieve the target.

Underlining the significance of the state of the art three-phase electrical locos, Mr Rathwa said the new factory which is coming up at Madhepura in Bihar for this purpose should be set up early so that the deficit of electrical locomotive is met without any further delay.

He said the Railways had initiated action to set up a workshop with the state-of-the-art facility at Baroda to undertake periodic overhauling of three-phase locomotives.

The minister also suggested that Railways should plan to introduce airconditioned EMU service for Mumbai area as a pilot project and then use the results for future expansion of such services.

He said 17,811 route kilometers of track had been electrified which constituted about 28 per cent of the total Railways' network and efforts must bbe stepped up to electrify more tracks in view of the economical and environment-friendly nature of electric traction.

The two-day conference is deliberating on issues of electrification, production of electric locomotives, improvement in the passenger amenities like train lighting and air conditioning, punctuality performance of electric trains, suburban EMU/MEMU services and energy conservation Railway Board Ramesh Chandra, Member Traffic V.N. Mathur and Member Mechanical R.K.Rao were among those who addressed the conference.

UNI