Western Railway has clocked up freight loading of 80.72 million tons in the financial year 2020-21, higher by 4.7% against the loading of 77.06 million tons in FY 2019-20.
Despite the prevailing COVID-19 Pandemic and total lockdown during the period April-May’20 in which
Because of the COVID-19 lockdown, WR loaded only 8.84 MT against the previous year loading of 13.10 MT (-32.5%), However, the zone bounced back and surpassed the loading of last financial year. WR has significantly increased its loading in fertilizers, cement, food grains, iron & steel, salt & auto, in spite of a major drop in coal loading owing to the drastic fall in the imported coal.
During the period from 22nd March 2020 to 31st March 2021, WR operated a total of 36,128 goods train rakes. These trains carried 81.93 million tons of freight. The zone also interchanged 74,834 freight trains with other zones in which 37,478 trains were handed over and 37,356 were trains taken over at different interchange points.
WR CPRO Sumit Thakur stated that during 2020-21, commodities weighing more than 3.0 lakh tonnes have been transported by Western Rly through its 1,027 parcel special trains, which mainly included agricultural produce, medicines, fish, milk etc. The revenue generated through this transportation has been approx. Rs 108.96 crore.
During this period, 184 milk special trains were run by Western Rly, with a load of more than 1.35 lakh tonnes and 100% utilization of the wagons. Similarly, 627 COVID-19 special parcel trains with a load of more than 81 thousand tonnes were also run to transport various essential commodities.
In addition to this, 125 indented rakes carrying more than 57 thousand tonnes were also run with almost 100% utilization. 91 Kisan rails with a load of approx. 29 thousand tonnes have been run during the year.