A slew of pro-active measures taken by the Southern Railway in the last two years have brought about substantial improvement in the operation efficiency in transportation of cargo across the zone. The operating ratio on goods train has been reduced by 7.6 per cent in 2014-15 when compared to that of 2012-13. In short, the Southern Railway has managed to carry more loads of cargo using lesser number of wagons in the last two years, said its Chief Operations Manager S. Anantharaman.
Mr. Anantharaman who was here in connection with Railway Week Celebrations told The Hindu on Thursday that success in improving the operational efficiency was possible owing to better monitoring, improved running of engines and wagons, ensuring availability of crew members, so that the rolling stock — the locomotives and the wagons — did not wait for loco pilots for operation.
“Two years back, Indian Railways filled up vacancies in the posts of locopilots,” he said. Similarly, some structural adjustment and distribution of crew among the divisions by way of transferring them to places of higher loading and re-orientation of working system helped in improving the efficiency, he said.
Stating that lesser turnaround of wagon — the time taken between two successive loadings of a wagon — was important in efficient usage of the transport system, Mr. Anantharaman said that the idling wagons were being sent to neighbouring zones such as the South Central Railway for loading. “Thereby, we started receiving more loads to Southern Railway without affecting the local loading,” he said.
Stating that the emphasis was on optimisation of the available resources, the COM said that while 9,294 wagons used in 2012-13 had only loaded 37 million tonnes of cargo in the zone, Southern Railway managed to increase the loading to 39.01 million tonnes by using just 8,247 wagons in 2014-15. “Thereby, we have paid lesser lease charges for 1,800 wagons in 2014-15, he said. The net tonne kilometre per wagon day (the net cargo weight and distance covered by a wagon in a day) has improved to 17,303 in 2014-15 from 16,433 the previous year, he added. Besides, the throughput in critical sections has been increased, he added.
