Indian Railways has repaired 2,179 damaged bogies to carry more coal from mines to power plants at a cost of Rs 150 crore. Officials gave this information. The unusually scorching heat in the country has led to an unprecedented increase in the demand for electricity. This is the reason why officials can be seen scrambling to store coal to prevent outages.
An official of the national transporter, on the condition of anonymity, said, “With the power crisis and the pressure of coal transportation, the Indian Railways is working relentlessly to expedite repairs of wagons so that power plants need coal. Supply should not be affected. We have set up five new facilities to repair the damaged coaches.
Summer hit India earlier this year, and March was the hottest month on record. The Bureau of Meteorology has predicted that high temperatures are expected to continue till May. Peak power demand on Sunday was a record 191,216 MW, and there was a shortfall of 207 MW. Coal-fired plants are the mainstay of power generation in the country and there has been a shortage of coal in the plants, creating a crisis.
Ever since private contractors hired by power plants started unloading coal using JCBs, damage to coal wagons has become a matter of concern for the Railways. This was previously done manually.
About ₹ 5 lakh to ₹ 10 lakh is spent on repair of a coal bogie. “The JCB hit the inner side of the bogies, causing serious damage, resulting in a significant increase in the number of bogies damaged,” the official said.
In view of the power crisis, Railways has so far canceled more than 42 passenger trains to make way for coal rakes. This has increased the average daily loading of coal-carrying cargo trains to over 400 per day, the highest in the last five years. There are up to 84 bogies in a rake.
About 9,982 bogies carrying coal were listed as damaged on January 1, which has been reduced to 7,803 on May 2, official data shows. Railways is holding meetings with all operational zones to take stock of the situation. An official present at the meetings, who did not wish to be named, said, “Officers from regions like East Coast, East Central, West Central and South East Central have highlighted the issue of movement of coal to power plants.”
He said, “Due to shortfall in the availability of coal stock, the turnover time of bogies waiting for loading of coal has increased from one week to about 15 days. However, to deal with such situations and to expedite the movement of coal. For this, we are also using our around 50 damaged bogies.”