SCR proves worth in face of Covid adversity
Tackling challenges thrown by Covid, railways managed to keep supply chain running besides ferrying lakhs of migrants to hometowns
Hyderabad: This year has been one full of challenges for South Central Railway (SCR). Faced with the difficulties thrown by the Covid-19 pandemic, the railways managed to keep the supply chain running and help lakhs of people reach their home in adverse circumstances.
The Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdown had put both lives and livelihoods of thousands of migrant workers in uncertainty. Many had no choice but to leave the city and return to their hometowns. Taking notice of this, SCR with the support of the Telangana government started arranging shramik special trains, the first such service in the country, which were flagged off on May 1.
1.87 lakh ferried
The SCR’s shramik special trains took home over 1.8 lakh migrant workers across the country. About 151 trains were operated from 14 stations in Telangana including Lingampally, Ghatkesar, Cherlapally, Bibinagar, Medchal and Bolarum stations. According to SCR, the Telangana government collaborated with the zone to run the special trains from May 1 to June 30. These migrant workers included those from Bihar, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and West Bengal among other States. This apart, passenger special trains commenced from May 12 across the zone helping lakhs of passengers reach their destinations every day from Secunderabad, Kacheguda, Hyderabad and Lingampally stations.
Track maintenance
In addition, SCR has made good use of the lockdown to take up track maintenance and stood first among zones in the Indian Railways in such works. The Zone commissioned a total of 89 km of new lines, 41 km of doubling and 44 km of gauge conversion works. In Telangana region, 43 km of new lines and 30 km of doubling has been commissioned.
Transportation of essentials
To ensure uninterrupted supply of essential commodities, the zone made arrangements for parcel loading and transportation of food grains across Indian Railways. From Telangana, food grains such as paddy and maize were loaded at various places such as Nizamabad, Karimnagar, Sultanabad, Warangal, Nalgonda, Miryalaguda, Kazipet and Nekonda and sent to different parts of the country during the lockdown.
To enhance railways freight basket, SCR recently introduced the Cargo Express, which was the first-of-its-kind and innovative concept in the Indian Railways. Under this concept, SCR announced a timetabled freight train between Sanathnagar to Adarsh Nagar in New Delhi as a pilot project.
SCR also created a record by ferrying turmeric from Nizamabad to Benapole in Bangladesh by rail. With this, freight customers in and around Nizamabad area are now showing interest in transporting turmeric by rail to Bangladesh.
Anti-train collision
Introducing a Train Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) on Indian Railways, the SCR successfully commissioned a project for a distance of 21.5 km between Mudkhed–Secunderabad of Hyderabad division. TCAS is an indigenously designed automatic train protection system aimed at preventing train accidents caused due to signal passed at danger by train and disobedience of train speed restrictions, by automatic application of the brakes if the train operator fails to do so.
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