SECR for preliminary engineering-cum-traffic survey for 4th line on Bilaspur-Nagpur route
| Date :07-Jan-2020 |
By Sagar Mohod :
The South East Central Railway (SECR) Zone that earns 3/4th of goods revenue of Indian Railways is aggressively pushing expansion project and is now eyeing 4th line on Bilaspur-Nagpur route. After nearly two years of deliberations, Construction Wing is going for preliminary engineering-cum-traffic survey on the 412 kms route. Sometimes back also Bilaspur Zone had floated tenders for conducting preliminary engineering survey but it seems nothing materialised from it that required the current second call for survey.
The survey is necessary to have a grasp at costing for 4th line, the revenue streams that could be tapped with new line, the land available with Railways and how much more land would be needed. Post available for all the details a proposal would be sent to Railway Board for its approval. Senior Zonal officials further said that Bilaspur-Nagpur is one of the heavily congested and due to this the movement of goods trains gets hampered. Therefore with 4th line the Railways plans to use the same exclusively for movement of goods trains, particularly goods rake from Southern Coalfields Ltd. to meet the growing demand for coal from thermal power houses.
Bilaspur Zone transports maximum coal over 17 Zones in country and its earnings from it are over 70 per cent aggregated revenue of Railways from haulage of coal. As number of Mail/Express trains continued to increase over last 20-years the capacity expansion of track network took a back seat resulting in congestion on the route. The utilisation of the Bilaspur-Nagpur route is over 150 per cent resulting in stalling of trains, mostly the goods that in turn affects the earnings. Hence since last two years Zonal bosses were contemplating gong for 4th line to ease the load on existing two mainlines.
The advantage with Railways that due to foresight of Britishers ample land is already available. Even for third line not much was needed to be required and for fourth line too ample land is already available. Only in some section some patches small land parcels would need to be acquired for which officials do not think it as a major problem. Therefore, Bilaspur Zone is pushing for 4th line so that capacity constraints can be overcome. As work on third line between Bilaspur and Jharsugda and between Rajnandgaon-Nagpur, a distance of 234 kms, is already nearing completion it's cheaper to lay additional assets from electrification and signalling purposes. The third line is already in place between Bilaspur-Jharsugda, a distance of 206 kms as also on Bilaspur-Raipur route that is about 176 kms.
At present about 54 pairs of Mail/Express trains operate on the route apart from number of passenger trains on shorter distances as also the DEMU trains in some sections. With Nagpur Division going in for enmass Gauge Conversion, about 700 kms of additional area would be added to SECR. Another 110 km would be added in division after work on Itwari-Nagbhid route is also completed. Post completion of Gauge Conversion works additional train services would also be started and hence Railways are pushing for expansion of present infrastructure to handle the future traffic, said people in know of the project.