News Brief
200 Oxygen Expresses Complete Journey To Deliver Emergency Medical Aid
- The railways is creating new standards and benchmarks in running oxygen express freight trains to ensure relief reaches in the fastest time possible.
An oxygen tanker at a railway station.
Around 200 oxygen expresses have so far delivered nearly 12,630 metric tonnes (MT) of liquid medical oxygen (LMO) in more than 775 tankers across the country.
Oxygen expresses have reached out to 13 states – Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Telangana, Punjab, Kerala, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh.
Until now, 521 MT of oxygen has been offloaded in Maharashtra, nearly 3,189 MT in Uttar Pradesh, 521 MT in Madhya Pradesh, 1,549 MT in Haryana, 772 MT in Telangana, 98 MT in Rajasthan, 641 MT in Karnataka, 320 MT in Uttarakhand, 584 MT in Tamil Nadu, 292 MT in Andhra Pradesh, 111 MT in Punjab, 118 MT in Kerala and more than 3,915 MT in Delhi.
Indian Railways is picking up oxygen from places like Hapa and Mundra in the West and Rourkela, Durgapur, Tatanagar, Angul in the East and then delivering it all over the country in complex operational route planning scenarios.
Tracks are kept open and high alertness is maintained to ensure that oxygen express keeps zipping through. All this is done in a manner that does not disrupt the services of other freight operations.
The average speed of these critical freight trains is way above 55 kmph in most cases over long distances. Running on the high priority Green Corridor, operational teams of various zones are working round the clock to ensure that oxygen reaches in the shortest possible time frame. Technical stoppages have been reduced to one minute for crew changes over different sections.
The railways has mapped different routes with oxygen supply locations and has prepared itself for any emerging need of the states. States provide tankers to the Indian Railways for bringing LMO.
