NASHIK ROAD :
During the lockdown and unlock period, the railways have played an important role in the transportation of essential goods and freight to keep the supply chain intact. It has also played an important role in the lives of farmers by launching Kisan Rail for the transportation of perishable goods like fruits and vegetables.
Kisan Rail has received good response and till November 7, it has transported 12,400 tons of freight. Perishable goods like pomegranate, capsicum, green chillies, ginger, lemon, frozen fish and other parcels are being transported by Kisan Rail.
Central Railway operates Deolali to Muzaffarpur (tri-weekly), Nagpur to Adarsh Nagar, Delhi (weekly), Sangola to Manmad (tri-weekly) and Sangola to Secunderabad (weekly) Kisan trains. Central Railway has transported 75,282 tonnes of essentials such as pharmaceutical and pharma products, e-commerce goods, mail and other hard parcels by 597 scheduled parcel trains and, 49202 tonnes of parcels by special trains.
In the last seven months, Central Railway has operated about 13,400 freight trains with an average of 2,776 wagons a day, carrying a total of 6.44 lakh wagons. Central Railway has imported coal from 2.50 lakh wagons, containers from 1.95 lakh wagons, cement from 42,985 wagons, food grains from 5,127 wagons, fertilizers from 30,222 wagons, petrol and oil from 60,541 wagons. Lubricant, steel from 16,973 wagons, sugar from 3303 wagons, onion from 7,805 wagons, kadaba from 2,327 wagons and other goods from 28,727 wagons.
Moved 6.4 lakh wagons since lockdown
Central Railway says it has moved various kinds of goods in over 6.4 lakh wagons and 13,400 trains in the past 7 months up to 9th November 2020. At an average of 2,770 wagons per day, Central Railway has loaded 2.5 lakh wagons of coal, 1.95 lakh container wagons and almost 43 thousand cement wagons. Steel, food grains, fertilizer and various other commodities took up the rest.