Waltair division ranks among top 5 in railway freight traffic

Visakhapatnam: Waltair Division, part of East Coast Railway (ECoR) headquartered at Bhubaneswar has moved into the bracket of top five divisions of Indian Railways in handling freight traffic during April-December, 2023.

Divisional Railway Manager Saurabh Prasad said the division is on a growth trajectory by handling 100 million tonnes of combined loading and unloading as on January 13, 2024 in less than 300 days for the first time.

"Our freight loading increased by 9 per cent as we loaded 54.42 MT in April-December, 2023 as compared to 49 MT in the corresponding period last year," he said at a meeting. Waltair Division consistently performed well in all the quarters and moved ahead by creating new records. The division is leading in all departments like safety, security, infrastructure development, amenities improvement, asset management, human resource management and innovative initiatives for generating additional revenue.

He said that Waltair Division has started freight operations at Nagarnar Steel Plant of NMDC near Jagdalpur, and has recently awarded work of development of Gati Shakti Terminal at Bheja to Adani. With a focus on enhancing throughput, record 1162 long haul trains were formed in April-December in the current fiscal as against only 422 long haul trains during the same period in 2022. Prasad mentioned that the number of passengers increased from 20.31 million in FY23 to 22.09 million in current financial year.