Now parcels can be booked on scheduled parcel trains on a portal of Indian Railways like booking tickets on IRCTC website.

In order to attract non-bulk freight, the railways is launching time-tabled parcel trains for white goods with the aim to tap e-commerce players.

While coal, cement, foodgrains, fertiliser and iron ore among others are considered bulk freight, the goods with less weight like medicines, electronics and similar white goods are non-bulk goods.

Consisting of 12 parcel vans, a parcel train has the carrying capacity of about 456 tonnes.

The railways are missing out on small quantity white goods as it requires about 1,500 tonnes of minimum quantity for booking a rake.

Since the railways is now aiming at a target of 3,000 metric tonnes (MT) loading by 2027, the public transporter is trying to address the lot size problem by tapping off the non-bulk items with less weight.

Attracting the small quantity is essential for the railways now and accordingly a full-fledged parcel service would be launched shortly.

The share of the national transporter on non-bulk items is negligible as most of these goods are being transported on the roads.

With the expansion of the e-commerce market, there is a huge scope of attracting non-bulk items on the rail and for this we need time-tabled parcel service, said a senior Railway Ministry official.

The railways hopes that customers would prefer parcel service if there is an assured delivery system on time. Because the rail service would be faster and safer, added the official.

While the plan is being finalised to run time-tabled parcel trains across the country, CRIS, the software arm of Indian Railways, is building the parcel portal. The portal containing information about scheduled parcel trains, is expected to be launched shortly.