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Railways to add 1,500 wagons to their fleet each month to transport coal
The railways have increased wagon production, adding nearly 1,500 of them, or 30 freight trains, every month only for coal transportation ahead of the summer.
Amid strong indications of an early summer and a spike in electricity demand, efforts are being made to ensure adequate and sufficient supply of coal to power plants and avoid situations such as last summer, when they had to cancel a large number of passenger trains for coal movement.
The production of waggons has more than doubled and till January of the 2022-23 financial year, we have produced over 17,000 waggons and nearly 50 per cent of these are meant for carrying coal. Railways prioritise this area. Aside from accelerating the addition of more waggons to our system, there is a greater emphasis on expediting approvals for all important coal movement projects.
Peak power demand in India is expected to reach 230 GW in 2023, up from 211GW in January, which was close to an all-time high of 216 GW in April 2022.
During this time, the railways took the drastic step of cancelling nearly 700 passenger trains in order to rush coal to the country's thermal power plants. Given the railways' track record of giving priority to passenger trains over freight trains, this was seen as an exception.
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