Handling of longer freight trains will become easier for South Central Railway, thanks to a new longer loop. The zone has commissioned a 750-metre extension to an existing loop at Navabpalem station of Vijayawada Division. The full length of the loop thus increases to 1.5 km or 1,500 metres. This will ease the operation of the so-called ‘long-haul’ trains on the freight heavy Visakhapatnam-Vijayawada route.
According to SCR, this is the second long loop to be commissioned after Bikkavolu. In all, six long loops are planned on SCR. Three of these, at Bikkavolu, Navabpalem & Elamanchili, are on the Visakhapatnam-Vijayawada route. The remaining three, Nidubrolu, Ammanabrolu & Bitragunta, are on the Vijayawada-Chennai route.
Navabpalem Station Longer Loop Highlights
- Non-Interlocking work was completed in seven days as against scheduled period of 9 days.
- Electronic interlocking with 70 routes.
- Axle counters for Intermediate Block signals located in Navabpalem – Tadepalligudem & Navabpalem – Nidadavolu sections. Data loggers are provided with modern equipment.
- 2 sets of Unimat machines and T-28 Cranes have been used at the site for faster work.
- The main line and loop line of the station have been provided with separate elementary sections to facilitate independent OHE blocks.
Longer Loops and Long Haul Trains
Over the past several years, Indian Railways has been trying to improve line capacity utilisation. One of the ways is to run what IR calls a long haul train. This is essentially two standard length goods trains combined into a longer one.
However, the operation of long haul goods trains on existing infrastructure brings with it several challenges. Such a train cannot be placed in a standard length loop. As a result, faster trains, passenger services, for example, cannot overtake long haul ones. This restricts the time slots during the day when long-haul trains can run. As a result, the use of the much-hyped long-haul trains has been quite limited.
With longer loops, more slots may become available to run such trains, thus improving line capacity and reducing wagon detention. IR has approved the construction of such longer loops in various freight dense sections across the country over the past several years.
Running such long trains must be costly. Even substation capacity may have to be augmented? Are these run on regular basis? Will there be return for investment over a period of time? Is it done on all zones?
Monitoring energy consumed and specific energy consumption and cost may also give an index of performance.