Hyderabad: South Central Railway has received a good response for the time tabled parcel services introduced during the lockdown period. This has enabled the zone to extend its services till the end of December. The South Central Railway has loaded and transported third highest parcel traffic amongst all zones over Indian Railways during the lockdown period.
Due to the outbreak of COVID- 19, the entire country was under unprecedented lock down till May 31 to contain the spread of the pandemic. However, Indian Railways started running its parcel trains including the time tabled Parcel service Express Trains, with a special focus to ensure uninterrupted supply of essential commodities throughout the country.
Accordingly, South Central Railway also operated 194 time tabled parcel services during the period from 14 April to 31 May, wherein 438 parcel vans and 265 luggage takes were loaded with essential commodities like fruits, medicines, paddy seeds, eggs, fish, lemon, ghee and other commodities to different destinations across the spectrum. These parcel trains carried around 9,317 tonnes, which is third highest among all the zones OG Indian Railways. In addition, the zone has introduced an innovative concept of the Doodh Duronto Milk special train to cater the dairy product needs to New Delhi, which was earlier transported by passenger carrying trains.
These trains transported around 70 lakh liters of milk loaded in around 173 milk tankers and was dispatched by 26 trains during the lockdown period. Apart from the above, the zone has notified Medchal Railway station for handling parcel traffic to facilitate the Parcel customers located in and around outskirts of Hyderabad area to transport goods by rail. In addition, the parcel traffic has been loaded from Kachiguda to new destinations like Guwahati and etc. With the support and encouragement being rendered by South Central Railway duly ensuring timely delivery and safe handling of commodities, there is enormous response from the customers for transporting their goods by these time table parcel services.
Due to the response received from the parcel customers, Indian Railways has extended the running of these Parcel Express Trains on select routes over SCR for a further period of six months up to the end of the year.
Gajanan Mallya, General Manager, SCRÂ advised all the Cargo aggregators, merchants and other perishable transporters to utilize these timetabled parcel services for safe, efficient transportation.
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