South Central Railway (SCR), Guntur Railway Division, celebrated 59th Railway Week at Rail Mahal in Arundelpet on Saturday. Railway Week is being celebrated in Indian Railways from April 10 to 16, to mark the anniversary of the run of first train in India on April 16, 1853.
Divisional Railway Manager (DRM) N.K. Prasad, Additional DRM V Chandrasekhara Rao, Senior divisional commercial manager C. Ramakrishna and heads of various departments attended the celebrations.
Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Prasad said that Indian Railways started with a single train 160 years ago is a mammoth organisation now with over 14 lakh employees, 64,000 route kilometres, carrying 2.3 crores of passengers daily and transporting over 1 billion tonnes of freight annually. In 2013-14 financial year, Guntur Division has performed well in all key areas like goods traffic, punctuality of trains, diesel utilisation, wagon turn round and speed of goods trains.
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Two new crossing stations Bommaipalli between Nagireddipalli and Pagidipalli and Nandipalli between Nandyal and Gazulapalli have been opened. Originating earnings of 2013-14 at Rs.452.26 crores were increased by 3% compared to that of last year. As a result of intensified ticket checking drives, passenger earnings have gone up to 25% over last year which is highest in the zone.
New express trains (Narsapur to Nagarsol and Kakinada Town to Lokmanya Tilak Terminus) and one passenger train (Nandyal-Kurnool Town) have been introduced while one passenger train service was extended (Kachiguda-Miryalaguda to Piduguralla) this year. Regular run of the double-decker train (Guntur – Kacheguda) is going to take place shortly, the DRM added.
Earlier, cultural programmes were organised by staff and family members of the employees.
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