The South Central Railway (SCR) is expecting the recent slew of schemes announced by the Railway Board to not only help meet its freight carrying capacity target but also reach the record levels touched last year. It had carried a high of 122.5 million tones (MTs) last year as against the target of 111 MTs and this year it has been set a load capacity of 128 MTs.
About 40 MTs has been done to date and the measures like not charging 15% surcharge during the forthcoming festival season from October onwards is expected to help it reach closer to the target despite the economic slowdown in various sectors across the country, according to senior officials.
Major commodities being loaded here are cement, clinker, coal, foodgrains, fertilizers and others. Now, all these commodities are to be exempted from this surcharge and additional traffic would be brought to the railways benefiting its freight customers.
About 25 goods rakes or trains of up to 40 wagons each are operated daily by the SCR to various destinations towards the north or down further south as it makes use of the cement and other industries in places like Jaggaiahpet, Tandur and Balarshah.
There are about 103 independent railway lines exclusive for the movement of goods like cement, steel, lime stone, dolomite and iron ore to the plants, they explained. While mini-rakes movement was not much, removal of 5% supplementary charge for running half of the 40 wagons for small capacity customer would also help in getting in more freight, they claimed.
From 5-10 mini-rakes a day, there is hope that it could be doubled by loading smaller cargo sizes of cement, steel, foodgrain and fertilizers. Haulage charges would reduce by 35% with charge to be levied in 0-100 km slab rather than 0-50 km and this is to give a fillip to the container traffic between ports and inland container depots.
Further, a discount of 25% in haulage charge of empty flat wagons and containers to ports could bring more customers to the rail mode of transport with substantial savings to be made. Low density commodities like pet coke, met coke, de-oiled cake and others are also exempted from mandatory weighment to save transit time and money for customers to get new commodities on the freight basket, they said.
Lower haulage charge for de-notified 90 commodities, induction of new modified goods car rakes, new design wagons, relaxation of weighment conditions for perishable traffic and an electronic railway receipt across the country doing away with paper would provide a hassle-free transport at competitive rates, added railway officials.
