The Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) is using the lockdown period to carry out maintenance work even as the freight and parcel carrying trains are running regularly with essentials items 24X7, an official said. With the passenger trains having stopped plying throughout the country for more than a month, different divisions of NFR are busy converting the lockdown period into an opportunity to speed up maintenance work, NFR chief public relations officer (CPRO) Subhanan Chanda, said on Saturday.
Although freight and parcel carrying trains are running regularly with essentials items 24×7, Chanda said there are 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, Chanda said.
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, the CPRO said.
As most parts of the entire railway systems are already overburdened with more than 100 per cent utilisation, getting such block is difficult although essential, he added.
Since the lockdown started from March 25, the engineering department of NFR took the opportunity to unload ballast in different locations of track to ensure adequate availability of ballast for safer train movement.
A total of 14 km of new rails were unloaded in different locations for replacement of old rail panels, Chanda said. 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 utilisation with machines used for track tamping in 635 km of track.