A power crisis on an old track and a plan that was never implemented

The Railways' decision to stick with steel wagons may have contributed to the shortage of rakes to haul coal to generating plants

The Indian Railways has had a solution to the current crisis of wagon shortage for the past two decades, but never implemented it. The idea was to consider the use of aluminium progressively to build wagons, adding to its steel and stainless steel made fleet. This transition would have cut costs and substantially added to freight haulage capacity without adding more engines, crew or fuel costs. The initial higher investment would have been repaid by higher capacity.

This year, the Railways is gasping to balance demands from the thermal power industry for faster coal supplies with the demands of other