Bhubaneswar: East Coast Railway (ECoR) has loaded highest ever freight loading in Indian Railways in the just concluded 2021-22 Financial Year i.e. from 1st April 2021 to 31st March, 2022 and created history by securing top position in Freight Loading. Since last four years, ECoR securing top position in freight loading. Since the inception of new Zone, ECoR has consistently witnessed incremental loading over the previous year performance, in the field of freight transportation.
ECoR has loaded 232.13 MT of freight in 2021-22 fiscal and surpassed the last financial year annual loading of 204.90 MT registering an incremental growth of 13.28%. ECoR has carried 27.23 million tons of more cargo than the freight loading achieved in last fiscal. From the above, ECoR has also earned Rs 23012.32 Crores from freight traffic in this FY which is also the highest on Indian Railways.
During the period, ECoR has carried 52.8 MT from Freight from Talcher area, 21.6 MT from Paradeep area, 21 MT from Steel Plants, 15.2 MT from Dhamara area, 14 MT from Visakhapatnam area, 13.7 MT from KK Line, 9.9 MT from Gangavaram port, 8 MT of Aluminum from its jurisdiction and 20.6 from other area.
This could be possible due to outstanding performance of all the three Divisions of East Coast Railway, i.e. Khurda Road, Waltair and Sambalpur. Relentless Round the Clock Close Monitoring & Outstanding supervision, dedicated and sincere work force brought this performance, to make ECoR proud. ECoR General Manager Ms Archana Joshi and Principal Chief Operations Manager, Shri Pramod Kumar Jena congratulated the Team involved in Freight loading and appreciated their Endeavour works.
Despite the challenges of Covid 19 pandemic, slump in demand of export of iron ore and Crises in Coal; ECoR has taken challenge and focused on Power Houses of the country so that hampering on necessary services during pandemic could be avoided. Apart from this, ECoR has run 44 nos of Oxygen Special Trains towards different destinations of the country during the Covid pandemic in short notice.
From October 2021, when the nation saw an unprecedented coal crisis, ECoR rose to the challenge and loaded 16.7% more of coal especially from Talcher which loaded 23% more in FY. This helped in building up coal stocks in many power houses throughout the country. The other major sectors like steel, Iron ore and aluminium also registered substantial growth.
During the period, 152.46 MT of freight carried from Khurda Road Division, 66.88 MT of freight from Waltair Division and 12.79 MT of freight carried from Sambalpur Division. To achieve commendable performance, ECoR has made Maximum interchange of 217.8 trains per day in 2021-22 as against 195.4 per day in 2020-21. Apart from this, steps were taken to increase in release of Coal & Iron Ore Loading Wagons. Handling of BOXN rakes increased from 49.8% to 53.9% & BCN rakes from 39.6% to 44.0% in comparison to last financial year despite of less inward rake holding.
Major contributors of freight include Talcher, Paradeep, Dhamara, Visakhapatnam, Gangavaram, Keonjhar, KK Line, Steel Plants, Aluminum plants and from other places of ECoR jurisdiction. During 2021-22 fiscal Freight loading, ECoR is followed by South East Central Railway (SECR) with 212.37 MT and South Eastern Railway (SER) with 195 MT in freight loading.
