South Central Railway (SCR), apart from moving freight trains carrying essential commodities, has also been utilising the lockdown time to complete at least a couple of key infrastructure works. Long pending ‘Scissor Junctions’ at the busy Kazipet station and the even more busier Vijayawada station, which see anywhere between 150-200 passenger trains and 50-100 freight trains pass everyday, got a much needed makeover from standard wooden sleepers to concrete ones.
‘Scissor junctions’ are where trains have to cross four or more lines to get into the main line during movement. Upgradation of these junctions was on the mind of the top officials for decades, but they baulked at taking up the work as it involved cancelling several trains and delaying the running of many express/freight trains as both these stations handle bulk of trains moving towards south, north, east and west, explain senior officials.
For instance, several trains from Chennai, Bengaluru and Thiruvananthapuram towards Mumbai and Secuderabad have to pass through Kazipet junction whereas trains towards Howrah, Bhubaneshwar, Visakhapatnam and Delhi from these cities pass through the Vijayawada junction. Kazipet has comparatively lesser trains passing through it because some of them can bypass through Warangal towards Delhi or even Chennai, they informed.
Yet, replacement was imperative as the wooden sleepers ‘were badly perished’ and the engineering wing had to carefully manage allowing the trains on these sections. “With trains running almost round the clock, the junctions improvement could not be taken up during normal times. But, we took advantage of the lockdown period, re routed some freight trains and completed the job in three days flat using less than 30 personnel,” said General Manager Gajanan Mallya. Work involved dismantling the existing wornout wooden sleepers, digging, spreading new ballast material for the cushioning and laying the new concrete sleepers as well as new steel rails.
This was possible as the railway engineers were able to move the heavy modern machinery to lay tracks and sleepers to the site on the available free lines and complete the work in double quicktime with safety precautions, minimal manpower and social distancing. “Otherwise, it would have easily taken at least a month or more,” added Chief PRO Ch.Rakesh.
