High Level Railway Board Delegation to Visit China And Japan With a view to giving further fillip to International bilateral Cooperation in Railway Sector, a four- member high level delegation led by Chairman Railway Board Shri A.K. Mital is going on an official visit to China and Japan beginning on 12th June, 2015. The visit earlier scheduled in the last month was postponed in the wake of large-scale disruption to the train traffic in Northern and Western India due to Gujjar agitation. During their visit to China, the delegation will hold discussions with Head of National Rail Administration of Chinese Government on the ongoing cooperation with Chinese Railways in the areas of speed raising, heavy-haul operations, training and other related issues in terms of the MoU signed between the two Railways. It will also visit the modern Railway stations at Shanghai and Beijing and the coach manufacturing unit of Chinese Railways who are supplying state-of-the-art metro coaches to Kolkata Metro. The team will discuss the modalities for expediting various activities to ensure their scheduled delivery. In Japan, the team would hold discussions at apex level in Japanese Ministry of Land Infrastructure and Transport and other top ranking functionaries of the Japanese Government regarding the progress of India's Western dedicated freight corridor and the joint feasibility study of Mumbai-Ahmadabad high speed corridor and other issues of mutual interest. The Western dedicated freight corridor is being mostly financed by Japan. Visit to modern training centre of Japanese Railways and to propulsion equipment manufacturing unit of M/s Toshiba is also scheduled. In both countries, the delegation will have first-hand experience of technical details of high speed rail to which Govt. has been attaching a lot of importance. The visit would facilitate further work in technological up gradation and modernisation of Indian Railways and may also in time help bringing in high speed rail to India with technical and financial assistance from appropriate sources. AKS/rv
