The South Central Railways has announced it has created new records in freight operations during the financial year ended March 31, 2011, with the zone loading a total of 96.08 million tonnes, which is 10.18 million tonnes more than last year's 85.9 million tonne.

The SCR has also surpassed the target set for it by the Railway Board by 1.68 million tonnes, in terms of freight during 2010-11.

According to a statement from SCR, the zone has transported 48.69 million tonnes coal, which is almost five million tonnes more than that carried last year.

There has been an increase of 29.2% in fertiliser loading, 13.9% in cement loading and 3.1% food grain loading when compared to last year's freight handling numbers.

The SCR has said that the zone managed to achieve these milestones despite frequent disruption to traffic caused by various agitations and natural calamities. All the performance indices for operations have been improved tremendously.

Both the covered wagons (jumbo) and open wagon holdings were much less when compared to last year. But with efficient utilisation of the wagons the loading increased by 11.7% for covered wagons and 7.6% for open wagons.

The utilisation of diesel engines and electric engines has improved by 6.4% and 8.1% respectively when compared to last year. The net tonne kilometre has improved by 17.1% during 201-11 over previous financial year.

(Sourced from BL)