As reported, the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFCCIL) have completed the trial run of a heavy haul train which consisted a total of 103 wagons on the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor’s (EDFC) 194 km long Bhadan – Khurja section. The wagons of the heavy haul train were carrying finished steel and coal weighing around 9,000 ton.
The Golden Quadrilateral – which is name given to the linking of the metropolitan cities of Delhi, Howrah, Chennai, and Mumbai, is estimated to carry around 52 per cent of the passenger traffic and 58 per cent of revenue earning freight traffic of the national transporter. Reportedly, because the existing trunk routes of Mumbai-Delhi on the Western Corridor and Howrah-Delhi on the Eastern Corridor were highly saturated, Indian Railways lost the share in freight traffic from 83 per cent in 1950-1951 to 35 per cent in 2011-2012. This further led to the conception of the Dedicated Freight Corridor projects.
For the development of EDFC and Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (WDFC), Rs 814.59 billion is being invested. The DFC projects are being implemented by DFCCIL, a Special Purpose Vehicle formed under the Ministry of Railways for construction, operation, and maintenance of these corridors.
The total length of both the DFCs is 2,822 km (except Sonnagar-Dankuni section), with Eastern corridor covering 1,318 km and Western corridor covering 1,504 km. With the development and successful commencement of these two corridors, the national transporter expects to regain its market share of freight transport.
