NFR adds new traffic from Barak Valley, helping railways survive pandemic situation

The Northeast Frontier Railway has added a new traffic in its list from Barak Valley, with successful operation of 2 rakes loaded with clinker from Bihara station under Lumding division.

Clinker, a granular substance containing spherical pallets, is used as binder material in cement production.

“As a result of the initiative by BDU of Lumding division, clinker is being loaded in BCN rakes for the first time from Bihara station for cement production unit of STAR cement” a tweet put out by NF Railway mentioned this Sunday.

News of loading of clinker comes after 50 TATA vehicles were unloaded at Salchapra yard last October which was first time any vehicle manufacturer company preferred rail over road to bring vehicles to the valley.

“This product (clinker) used to be transported by road till now from Barak Valley but due to our continuous efforts and pursue, customers are now convinced to move it via railways” Badarpur Railway Area Manager S Umesh said to this website lauding his staffs whose continuous efforts made this happen.

“This was made possible due to the efforts of Sr divisional Operations manager Dr. Utsav Shukla, IRTS along with ground coordination and execution by the senior goods supervisor Mr. Bapan Ghosh and station superintendent Mr. Manoj Kumar. It’s all there efforts which brought fruit” the official said.

The consignment is being sent to Star Cement siding at Tetelia, Assam. “Till now two rakes have been dispatched, each consisting 21 wagons whereas 3rd rake is being loaded” S Umesh said.

Addition of such new traffic is helping the railways to survive this pandemic situation, in terms of revenue, when passenger movements are low.

A NFR press release says, Northeast Frontier Railway has transported more than 6847 nos. of inbound freight trains since beginning of the lockdown period i.e. from 25th March to 30th November 2020.

Out of this 1102 freight carrying trains were unloaded during the month of November only which is the highest unloading done during a month. “This is 35.21% more than the unloading of freight trains done during the corresponding month of last year (815 freight rakes were unloaded in NFR during November 2019)” the release mentioned.

During November, in Assam 570 rakes of freight carrying trains were unloaded of which 301 were loaded with essential commodities. 27 rakes in Nagaland, 61 rakes in Tripura, 3 rakes in Manipur, 1 rake in Mizoram and 5 rakes in Arunachal Pradesh were also unloaded during last month.