{"id":928,"date":"2019-09-24T15:34:49","date_gmt":"2019-09-24T10:04:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/?p=928"},"modified":"2019-09-24T15:34:51","modified_gmt":"2019-09-24T10:04:51","slug":"southern-railway-has-more-diesel-locomotives-than-it-requires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/?p=928","title":{"rendered":"Southern Railway has more diesel locomotives than it requires"},"content":{"rendered":"

Poor loco care causes delays, costs SR Rs.450cr in 5yrs<\/strong><\/p>\n

More than 500 engines broke down, others stuck in yards<\/strong><\/p>\n

Average locomotive use in the Zone is only 15 hours a day<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are studying the audit report and will send detailed comments\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>-Official<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"Chennai:<\/strong>\u00a0An audit report has found major that irregularities in maintenance and handling of diesel and electric locomotives<\/strong>\u00a0have caused Southern Railway a loss of Rs 450 crore in a five-year period.<\/p>\n

The exhaustive report for 2012-13 to 2016-17 identified wide-ranging problems, from an inaccurate assessment of locomotives required for freight and passenger services to the fact that 544 locomotives sustained mechanical failures as part of rakes operating outside Southern Railway jurisdiction, causing a loss of Rs 64 crore.<\/p>\n

The report does not mention the inconvenience to passengers, sources said, such a large number of mechanical failures naturally affected services.<\/p>\n

Inordinate delays after locomotives were dispatched for a periodic overhaul to workshops in Trichy and Perambur led to a loss of Rs 105 crore, it found.<\/p>\n

Southern Railway operates around 450 electric locomotives and 340 diesel locomotives \u2014 highly expensive assets, the poor handling and maintenance of which contributes to the railways\u2019 financial setbacks. The Zones’ operating ratio (the money spent to earn Rs 100) jumped from Rs 120 to Rs 160 over the past few years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are studying the audit report and will send detailed comments,\u201d a senior official said.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The report said\u00a0Southern Railway has more diesel locomotives than it requires<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 an affliction a source labelled as \u201cextra fat\u201d in the system. The report says average locomotive use in the zone is only 15 hours a day, well below the countrywide standard of 18.15 hours a day.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The audit also raised serious questions on the reliability of locomotives in the zone, noting that they incurred 492 hours of unwarranted ‘detention’ en route and at terminals and yards. The auditors blamed mechanical and electrical departments for the failures but also pointed to locomotives arriving late from sheds and their pilots reporting late to duty.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Indian Railways is spending crores of rupees on electrification of lines, but Southern Railway operated 56 trains with diesel locomotives in sections that were electrified, the report said. The percentage of ineffective diesel locomotives, an indicator of optimal utilisation, was higher than Railway Board-mandated standards, it said.<\/p>\n

The audit also found discrepancies in data that headquarters and the loco sheds maintained.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It found that Golden Rock Railway Workshop in Trichy detained 58% of locomotives for more than 30 days \u2014 the time frame for the periodic overhaul. This caused a loss of Rs 58 crore in earning capacity. One locomotive was held up in the workshop for more than six months.<\/p>\n

Southern Railway attributed the long periods that locomotives were held up in the workshop to lack of space, indicating that it is handling larger capacity than its maintenance facilities are designed for.<\/p>\n

Zonal officials told the auditors that indigenization of components was a contributing factor in unscheduled repairs of locomotives, causing a loss of Rs 157 crore during the review period.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Courtesy: TOI<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poor loco care causes delays, costs SR Rs.450cr in 5yrs More than 500 engines broke…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"koo_publish_custom_meta":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=928"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":930,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928\/revisions\/930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}