The South Central Railway (SCR) has made use of the lockdown period where the train movement was very much reduced to complete major track maintenance work to an extent of 984 km out of the total 6,336 km railway line under its control this month alone in the last 25 days. This is 10% of the total railway network repairs done during this period and performed the best among all zones, senior officials informed on Wednesday.
Track maintenance forms a crucial part of train operations as it has a direct impact on both the safety of tracks as well as in maintaining the maximum permissible speed of the trains and it includes strengthening the railway lines, points, crossings, sleepers and ballast for enhancing the safety, speed and reliability.
Modern imported track machines like plain packing machines, turnout packing machines, ballast cleaning machines and others were used extensively to complete the repairs in double quick time and maintaining social distancing as not much labour is used. Work of these machines involves cleaning and packing of the ballast (crushed stones underneath track and sleepers), correcting the alignments at the rail crossings of which are about 496 locations.
Maintenance work is also to check the cushioning capacity of the ballast and improve the drainage capacity of which 83 km was done. Worn-out track lines and concrete sleepers were removed and replaced with new ones with the help of the quick relaying system to an extent of 5.37 km, said to be another record, said Chief PRO Ch. Rakesh.
General Manager Gajanan Mallya appreciated the coordination displayed by the departments in expediting the track maintenance works by optimally utilising this period of less density of traffic for strengthening the tracks.
