South Central Railway has been exclusively focusing on track maintenance works and strengthening its Rail infrastructure to ensure utmost safety and to enhance the maximum permissible speeds wherever possible.
More details:
- In this direction, another important step has been taken by the Zone by enhancing the maximum permissible speed on the Godavari Arch Bridge located between Godavari – Kovvur stations to 50 Kmph.
- The speed limit was upto 30 Kmph from the year 2015 and was recently enhanced to 40 Kmph during April 2022 and now the speed trials have been conducted successfully duly enhancing the speed limit to 50 Kmph. The trains running towards Visakhapatnam direction are being operated on this bridge, which is for a length of 2.9 Kms.
- The stretch between Godavari – Kovvur covering a distance of 5 Kms is located in the Golden Diagonal (Grand Trunk) route of Gudur – Duvvada section, which acts like a gateway towards eastern and north east region particularly from the southern states of the country.
- The arch bridge located with the length of 2.9 Kms across River Godavari is very crucial as the passenger and freight trains are operated with maximum capacity and hence the section is oversaturated. Keeping in view the location of this bridge on the important Godavari river, Speed Restriction was earlier imposed at 30 Kmph right from the year 2015.
- Since then, the maximum permissible speed across the bridge was 30 Kmph. However, recently the Zone took up and completed the challenging task of deep screening activity with Ballast Cleaning Machines (BCM) along with replacement of sleepers with strenuous efforts despite tough working conditions.
- This resulted in enhancing the maximum speed limit to 40 Kmph in the month of April 2022. Now, after conducting the speed trials, the maximum permissible speed for loaded goods trains has been further enhanced to 50 Kmph and the trains are being run successfully.
Shri Arun Kumar Jain, General Manager Incharge, SCR has specially appreciated the Engineering Team who have put their dedicated efforts in completing this important work. He opined that the enhancement of speed on this critical bridge will ease the congestion in train operations and also helps in smooth operation of train services. This will also improve punctuality of train services besides comfortable travel experience to rail users.
Source: South Central Railway -Press Release
