The Southern Railway has readied the first Oxygen Express which would help in transporting liquid medical oxygen (LMO) for medical use. The empty O2 express left Tiruvallur on Tuesday night and would be reaching Rourkela in Odisha on Thursday.
In a press release, the Southern Railway said it had readied the Oxygen Express which would be carrying cryogenic tankers mounted on flat-type wagons.
The oxygen express would have cryogenic tankers mounted on trucks which would be filled with LMO and transported by rail under the Roll on and Roll off (RO-RO) method. This RO-RO service will facilitate door-to-door delivery of oxygen at the hospitals as per the directives of the State government without having to unload from the railway wagon and refill them again into another vehicle. The train would be operated on a green corridor identified by the railway authorities for operating at the optimum speed.
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The Indian Railways has started this initiative of running Oxygen Express on a mission mode to meet the requirement of LMO for the treatment of COVID-19 patients in different parts of the country.
The railways has already delivered nearly 5,735 metric tonnes (MT) of LMO in more than 375 tankers to Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Telangana. Uttarakhand and Tamil Nadu are set to receive their first oxygen express, the press release added.