Railway Board has awarded the coveted ‘Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant’ shield for overall best performance from among 16 zones across the country to South Central Railway (SCR), with its departments of commercial, electrical engineering, environment and cleanliness and stores receiving the best efficiency shields.
This award, along with the ‘Best Transformation Initiative Award’ to GM Vinod Kumar Yadav and eight other officers receiving the national award for their outstanding service, is to be presented by Railways Minister Piyush Goyal during the 63rd National Railway Week Celebrations in Bhopal next week.
The General Manager informed through a press conference on Tuesday that more awards are coming SCR’s way with the Lallaguda workshop adjudged the best for rolling stock and Visakhapatnam running room for loco-pilots as the top one. In all, it would be getting seven efficiency shields.
SCR performance in traffic volume and earnings, too, is among the best with gross earnings being ₹1,000 crore more in 2017-18 at ₹13,673 crore, 12% higher than the previous year’s ₹12,173 crore. Passenger earnings registered a 8.3% growth at ₹3,861 crore by carrying 379 million passengers. Earnings in freight has been ₹9,260 crore by loading 103.048 million tonnes with 16% growth in earnings and 6.4% growth in load.
Mr. Yadav claimed much progress in infrastructure works with 113 km completed, 17 km of doubling and nine km of third line between Mancherial-Peddampet which also had a bridge over Godavari river. In fact, a record 600 km was electrified, including Secunderabad-Bolarum of 13 km.
About ₹63 crore was spent on passenger amenities like lifts, escalators, ramps and on board housekeeping service in 67 trains with seven more in the pipeline. Apart from 1,454 special trains and scores of extra coaches, two trains have been extended up to Lingampalli station and two more will be extended to ease congestion at Secunderabad station.
Safety paramount
The GM admitted that there have been more instances of trains curtailed, diverted or cancelled because of maintenance works. “Safety is our prime concern. We have been running trains upto 130% of their capacity on our lines, so we are trying to clear the backlog work by having weekly schedules ensuring different trains are chosen for the ‘traffic block’ — up to three hours of stopping trains for maintenance work. We request passengers to cooperate,” he explained.
SCR could also be the first to go for 600 km of Train Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) with the trial run successfully completed by a private firm. Another firm is expected to follow suit soon which will enable tenders to be called, he added.
