A new dawn ushers on Indian Railways as it endeavours to be self-reliant for its energy needs, Railways have taken decisive steps to achieve ‘Net Zero’ carbon emission mass transportation network by 2030. As a part of this mission, Central Railway in coordination with automobile companies like M/s Mahindra & Mahindra has started loading cars to parts of India thereby saving precious fuel and earning carbon footprint.
- Business Development Units (BDU) formed to increase the rail share in the goods/parcel sector have mapped the data of inward and outward material both industry and sector wise.
- One to one meeting conducted with M/s Mahindra and Mahindra resulted in more loading of automobiles.
- They have also first and last mile connectivity for delivering the vehicles.
- This mode cuts down the time taken to transport its newly built vehicles from its plants to dealers in various cities across the country.
- Automobiles are transported in dedicated rakes.
- One such rake can carry 118 vehicles while a BCACBM rake, new high capacity Railway wagons, can carry approximately 300 vehicles.
- At present, railway uses New Modified Goods (NMG) rakes and privately owned BCACBM rakes for automobile transportation.
- Movement of these rakes are being monitored closely to reduce the turnaround time and subsequently making these rakes available for next loading has elicited customer satisfaction.
- Maharashtra is a big automobile hub, where Mahindra, Tata, Ford, Piaggio, Bajaj etc are manufacturing vehicles near Mumbai, Pune, Nashik, Nagpur and Aurangabad areas.
- There is a vast potential to carry automobiles manufactured in Maharashtra to different parts of the country.
- BDU meetings with M/s Tata Motors and other automobile companies have been held and the transportation is likely to heat the race.
- M/s Maruti have also transported 1.78 lakh cars across the country by using freight trains in this financial year from its 5 loading terminals to 13 destination terminals including Nagpur and Mumbai.
- Central Railway has transported automobiles in 18 rakes in July 2020.
Similarly, CR has transported agro based fertilizer (potash) manufactured from molasses alcohol waste for the first time from Daund. New traffic of wheat loading from Betul and Multai stations on Nagpur Division, maize from Khandwa and Paras; husk from Chalisgaon on Bhusaval Division has started. Other commodities targeted by the Central Railway are fly-ash, cotton, etc. A quantum jump in onion loading including export to Bangladesh has also been achieved.
Source: Central Railway-Press Release | Image Credit: MOR
