Northeast Frontier Railway speeds up maintenance work amidst lockdown

GUWAHATI: Different divisions of NFR (Northeast Frontier Railway) are busy converting the unprecedented lockdown period into an opportunity to speed up the maintenance work. It has been more than a month since passenger trains stopped plying throughout the country. Although freight carrying trains as well as parcel trains are running regularly with essentials items 24 x 7; it provides ample time gaps to take up track and other maintenance work. Undertaking such work is difficult due to very heavy movement of trains in normal time, and it requires traffic blocks or mega blocks by stopping movements of all trains to do such work. These blocks are normally taken on days with lesser train movements to lessen the adverse effects on the passenger for ensuring safe and timely train running. As most parts of the entire railway systems are already overburdened with more than 100 percent utilization, getting such block is difficult although essential.

Since the lockdown started from March 25, the Engineering department of NFR took the opportunity to unload 11,000 Cum of ballast in different locations of track for ensuring adequate availability of ballast for safer train movement. A Total of 14.0 kms of new rails were unloaded in different locations for the replacement of old rail panels. USFD testing which is done to detect invisible rail fractures were carried out in 619 km section during this period, to enhance the safety of train movement by many folds.

Since the lockdown started, the entire fleet of track machines was put into full utilization. Machines were used for track tamping in 635 kms of track. Dynamic Track Stabiliser machines were used in 165 kms of track. While ballast was dressed in 60 kms section, machine packing of 372 nos turnouts was done. Several other pending works were also completed by taking advantage of the lockdown. The progress achieved by track machines during this one-month lockdown is approximately 20 to 25% higher than the progress achieved during the normal course, despite the works being carried out with the minimum number of staff, labours maintaining all norms of social distancing, sanitization of workplaces etc., a release stated.

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