For January 2022, Indian Railways set a new record for freight loading with 129.11 mt. For the past 17 months, from September 2020 to January 2022, the national transporter has seen a constant increase in freight loading. Indian Railways loaded 107.56 mt of freight in January 2019, 110.58 mt in January 2020, 119.55 mt in January 2021, and 129.11 mt in January 2022, according to the Railway Ministry. The East Coast Railway (ECoR) became the first zonal railway to reach 200 mt freight loading in 2021-22, according to the national transporter, which was reported a few days ago. The zone has reached 200 mt in loading, an increase of 26.67 mt over the same period last fiscal, i.e. from 1 April 2021 to 14 February 2022. During the period, the ECoR loaded 200.50 mt of freight, compared to 173.82 million tonnes in the previous fiscal year's similar period. The zonal railway achieved this in just 320 days, compared to 360 days loaded in the previous financial year's corresponding period. According to Indian Railways, in the financial year 2019-20, the ECoR loaded 200 million tonnes of cargo in 366 days and took 360 days in the financial year 2020-21. This was made possible, according to the zone, by the outstanding performance of all three rail divisions, namely Waltair, Khurda Road, and Sambalpur. During the period, ECoR loaded 113.35 million tonnes of coal, 18.46 million tonnes of iron and steel, 7.06 million tonnes of raw material for steel plants, 27.22 million tonnes of iron ore, 5 million tonnes of fertiliser, 2.56 million tonnes of food grains, 1.13 million tonnes of cement, 2.34 million tonnes of POL, and 23.37 million tonnes of freight in containers and other cargo. Image Source Also read: Indian Railways and RailTel to develop Edge Data Centres