Southern Railway has drawn up plans to shift the Railway Goods Shed at Old Bunder here to a spacious location at Ullal to decongest the city as well as provide more facilities for freight train users.
“This should happen in about a year,” said General Manager, Southern Railway, John Thomas, at a virtual press conference from Chennai last week.
Responding to a query on the hardships being faced by residents as well as lack of facilities at the Goods Shed, he said that Southern Railway was working on the proposal to shift the facility to a spacious location.
He said that space at the Goods Shed would be later used to augment coaching facilities, meaning to handle/ stable passenger train rakes. He was told that the Goods Shed’s location was relevant when the Old Bunder was a hub of activities decades ago. But, at present, it has become a source of inconvenience. Many trucks plying to and from the Goods Shed to transport goods were choking the already congested roads, he was told.
The Ullal Railway Station is located at Someshwar and the Southern Railway has abundant space around the station.
Focus on freight, parcel
Stating that the zone has augmented its freight handling capacity and infrastructure during the COVID-19 lockdown, Mr. Thomas said that business development units were set up to drive freight and parcel business at the zonal and divisional levels. The zone operated over a 1,000 parcel trains during the lockdown out of which over 600 were from within the zone, he said. To a query, he said that the New Mangalore Port could exponentially drive Southern Railway’s freight operations and the zone was contemplating suitable action plans to divert traffic from road to rail.
Besides exploiting the potential for coal, the zone was working on wooing container and edible oil traffic to the Railways.
Principal Chief Operations Manager Neenu Itteyerah said that Southern Railway could handle 60 rakes of coal, 10 rakes of fertilizers and two rakes of edible oil a month.
