Indian Railways is poised to fight against the Coronavirus pandemic by adopting various measures including movement of Time Tabled Parcel Express Trains for maintaining uninterrupted supply of essential commodities to every nook and corner of the country during crisis in the wake of Covid-19. As a part of commitment to the nation, South Eastern Railway has geared up its entire network to run Time Tabled Parcel Express Trains towards different destinations in the country.
- South Eastern Railway, during this national crisis, has already run 4439 trips of Time Tabled Parcel Express Trains carrying essential commodities viz., food items, groceries, medicines, medical equipments, fish, fruits, cotton goods, gunny bags, vegetables, onion, ginger, garlic and other daily need items to different parts of the country from 2nd April to 15th September, 2020.
- South Eastern Railway during the above period, has carried 89,936 tonnes of parcel traffic containing 33,15,204 number of packages to different places in the country.
- These Time Tabled Parcel Express Trains are running between Shalimar-Ranchi, Shalimar-Mumbai CSMT, Howrah-Secunderabad, Howrah-KSR Bengaluru, Shalimar-Porbander and Tatanagar-Itwari. Apart from the above, Parcel trains running between KSR Bengaluru-Dimapur and KSR Bengaluru-Guwahati are also passing through SER jurisdiction.
- South Eastern Railway is also transporting parcel goods in 10 pairs of Special Trains which have been running in the path of existing Mail/ Express Trains with effect from 1st June, 2020.
Track maintenance works:
In train movement, rail track constitutes the most important part of the infrastructure providing a guided path for the wheels to move and carries the huge moving loads. The rail routes of South Eastern Railway (SER) have high density of freight and passenger trains. Presently, SER has 6464.624 Track km stretching over Kharagpur, Adra, Chakradharpur and Ranchi Divisions.
- A large number of Mail/Express, Passenger and Goods trains have been running over them daily.
- Monitoring of track is continuous activity.
- Section Engineers, Permanent Way Inspectors and staff of track maintenance are working round the clock despite nation-wide Covid-19 crises to keep safe, secured and well-maintained railway track.
- Infrastructural Civil Engineers and Section Engineers of the Engineering Department have laid emphasis on line maintenance works and have done their best out night and day across SER’s jurisdiction.
- Security services are on patrol and Safety Inspectors are engaged in regular inspections.
- PWIs and Track-men are continuing to maintain proactively railway track inspite of Coronavirus threat and restrictions.
- The vast network of SER has been divided into various maintenance sections for close and thorough check up & inspections.
- These lengthy and massive railway tracks are being supervised and maintained by those track-men and Section Engineers who are excellent practical men with long experience of keeping tracks in good repair.
- Railway tracks are being inspected on regular intervals to see that every section is fit for freight traffic and passenger traffic.
- In the wake of Covid-19 pandemic and country-wide health & physical precautions, SER has been running a number of Parcel Express Trains for uninterrupted supply of essential commodities and pharmaceuticals to reach out to the people across the country.
- In this situation, SER Track-men and Permanent Way Engineers have been engaged in track maintenance works wearing face masks and keeping social distancing to ensure the rail safety as well as smooth running of numerous freight and passenger trains.
Source: South Eastern Railway-Press Release
