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Zonal railways urged to step up coal loading

The Railway Board has urged major coal loading zonal railways to pull up socks and step up loading.

Coal accounts for nearly 50 per cent of Indian Railways’ revenue-earning freight loading and the coal throughput till October fell short of the proportionate target.

Coal throughput

Indian Railway (IR) is targeted to handle 529 million tonnes (mt) of coal traffic in 2013-14 and of this, an estimated 294 mt till October.

However, the throughput till October was 288 mt, or a drop of two per cent from the target. The throughput during the same period in the previous year was 274.7 mt.

Coal traffic situation

IR’s coal traffic situation came up for a review at a high-level meeting held here recently attended, among others, by the Chief Operations Managers of six coal-loading zonal railways such as South East Central, East Coast, South Eastern, Eastern, East Central and Central. The Member (Traffic), Railway Board, presided.

If IR is to hit the targeted coal loading figure in the current fiscal, its daily loading average has to rise to close to 390 rakes per day (236 rakes for Coal India’s mines and the balance for Singareni mines and imports) during the remainder of the fiscal, it was felt.

Coal loading target

Accordingly, each zonal railway has been given a higher target for loading for the period till March 2014. Thus, South East Central Railway, the largest coal loading zonal railway, has been given a target of 84/85 rakes per day against the present average of 74/75.

Similarly, the target given for other zonal railways is East Central Railway, 76, East Coast Railway 70, South Central Railway 39, Eastern Railway 32 and the like.

Senior officials of various zonal railways present at the meeting drew attention to various problems they encountered in their bid to boost loading. October was particularly bad due to the inclement weather affecting the operations of several zonal railways.

But then, as it was pointed out, the loading had been far from satisfactory in several collieries even before October due to such factors as poor demand (state electricity boards in Rajasthan and Gujarat are not lifting coal as before for whatever reasons hitting hard CIC mines under SECR), strained industrial relations and law and order problems (Talcher mines under ECoR), road-bridging problems (Ib Valley under SECR) and drop in production (ECR).

Two issues, which were emphasised as critical for stepping up coal loading, were improved availability of coal and significant reduction in detention of rakes both at the levels of collieries and consumers.

Drop in average net ton kilometer

The zonal railways also expressed concern over the drop in average net ton kilometer which is calculated on the basis of average lead and volume. The higher the NTKM, the higher will be the earning for the railways.

With more and more power plants coming up near the pitheads, the average lead will drop. Which means rail movement of coal will be over short distances and more and more localized, not a very comfortable development for the Railways.

Meanwhile, Coal India Ltd has been urged to gear up its machinery in its mines across the country to enable the railways to load at the rate of 236 rakes a day on an average till March 2014, up from the present 186.

Of this, the daily average loading in November and December should be around 220/222 rakes, to rise to 245/246 in the last quarter of the current fiscal.

The railways has made it clear to CIL at a recent coal-rail interface here that there will be no shortage of rakes. Senior officials of both the organisations were present.

Source: The Hindu Business Line