Kalka route electrification soon

AMBALA, Oct 28: The Central Organisation for Railway Electrification can run electric trains with much profit if the state electricity bo...

AMBALA, Oct 28: The Central Organisation for Railway Electrification can run electric trains with much profit if the state electricity boards make power available at reasonable rates. He said with the availability of power at cheaper rates, the electrification of railways would get a fillip as running cost was cheaper beyond a certain volume of traffic.

Disclosing the bottlenecks being faced by the CORE for getting power supply at reasonable rates from the state electricity boards, its general manager N.P. Srivastava said they were procuring electricity from different state boards almost at the ordinary consumer8217;s rate, which was very costly.

The Madhya Pradesh government, he said, supplied power at the highest rate of Rs 5 per unit, while Kerala was doing the same at the rate of 80 paise per unit only.

The CORE general manager was here to inspect the electrification work on Sirhind-Nangal Dam section.

Addressing mediapersons, Srivastava said though the CORE was trying to continue its services with costly power supply, they were also in contact with the NTPC for direct supplies. Efforts are also being made to ask the private power producers to supply electricity at cheaper rates, he added. Due to the availability of high horse power of electronic locomotives, it was possible to haul heavier goods trains at higher speed cutting down the requirement of diesel engines.

Justifying that electrified trains were much cheaper than the diesel-run trains, Srivastava said the cost of fuel with diesel engine in running the Shatabdi train from Chandigarh to Delhi came to Rs 80,000 against Rs 25,000 by electric train. He said the Mainline Electrical Multiple Unit MEMU services could be run on sub-urban routes like Ambala-Chandigarh, Ambala-Patiala, Ambala-Saharanpur, Ambala-Panipat etc.

Srivastava disclosed that the Chandigarh-Kalka, Sirhind-Ropar and Saharanpur Khan-Alampura sections would be electrified by the end of this year, while Saharanpur-Muradabad, Ludhiana-Amritsar and Ropar-Una-Nangal Dam sections would be completed during the year 2000-2001.

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He disclosed that in Haryana, 344 rkms of the total 1,500 rkms had been completed, while in Punjab 156 rkms had been covered so far.