RAILWAY EXPERT AND COMMENTATOR

Special tank wagons have been developed for fly ash transportation. NTPC has acquired three such rakes for Flyash evacuation from its power plants. Ash is loaded pneumatically in power plant and evacuated into silos at receiving end .

This has brought down cost of road building, cement manufacturing and brick building.

This also resulted in conversion of a cost centre into a profit centre for thermal power plants.

Railway officers in coal mining zones are incorporated in the board directors of Coal companies. Regular co-ordination meetings are held between two ministries to ensure optimum utilisation of rail and coal infrastructure.

Railway projects are financed by coal companies to augment coal evacuation railway lines and to lay new lines for accessing new mines .

Leading railway zones engaged in coal evacuation and transportation are SECR Bilaspur (CG), ECR (Hajipur Bihar), ECOR (Bhubaneswar Odisha), SER (Kolkata) and ER (Kolkata) .

Coastal railways like ECOR are also engaged in transportation of imported coal to power plants and industry located in the hinterland.

Thus both for domestically mined coal or imported from far lands of Indonesia, Australia and South Africa the rail and coal bond remains intact .

Over the years, an eco system has developed which is fostering this relationship. This includes mechanised loading and unloading respectively in mines and power