Eastern Railway loads 38 mnt cargo

Eastern Railway (ER) has recorded highest incremental freight traffic during the last financial year, loading 38 million tonne cargo while surpassing the target set by the Railway Board by 4 MT.

During the year, freight earnings of ER also went up to Rs 916.25 crore, up by 51 per cent from Rs 604.81 crore in 2002-3. In the process, the Railway Board's target of Rs 765.93 crore was also surpassed, Subhas Ranjan Thakur, chief operations manager of ER, said in Kolkata on Monday.

The operating ratio (OR) for the ER, an indicator of the zone's performance, stood at 160 even as the Board had predicted OR of 180. "We have done reasonably better than the expectation," Thakur added. Before the bifurcation of ER in October 2002, ER used to have an OR of 110-112.

During last year, earnings from passenger traffic went up to Rs 791.34 crore as against Rs 753.05 crore in 2002-3.

Overall, the earning of ER has gone up to Rs 1,833.22 crore as compared to Rs 1,483.99 crore in 2002-3, up by 23.5 per cent. By this way, it also surpassed Board's target of Rs 1562.50 crore.

As a whole, the Indian Railways is expected to carry 558 MT cargo, up from 538 MT. IR had also surpassed the target of 550 MT, set by the Board. It meant incremental earning of Rs 300 crore for the Railways. IR is expected to close the year operating ratio 90.

The 6.249 MT incremental traffic, which ER carried in 2003-4, gains significance for the fact that the zone is left with only four divisions as compared to seven before bifurcation. "Even in those days with high originating division like Dhanbad, we did not grew so much in a single year," Thakur pointed out.