Railways to plan for future with vision statement 2025 - Quoted in the Mint

The railways is also taking up capacity expansion projects to double cement loading to 200mt a year by 2012. India’s cement production is estimated to rise from 170mt to 280mt by 2012.
To meet its revised target, the rail budget proposed a new Bhanupali-Bilaspur-Beri line in Himachal Pradesh, where there could be a demand for cement loading. Besides, the railways has proposed to double the Daund-Gulbarga section and electrify the Pune-Guntakal line to meet the demand of cement manufacturers in the Wadi region.
Power focus
To address the demand of the power sector for efficient and cost-effective coal supplies, Prasad announced that most of the new dedicated routes for coal movement will operate wagons with 25% more carrying capacity.
This is being achieved by operating wagons with a 25 tonne axle load, as opposed to the existing 20 tonne axle load.
Axle load is the maximum permissible weight on each pair of wheels in a wagon for any given section of track.
The railways has projected that it will move 338.35mt of coal this fiscal. In 2008-09, it projects that coal freight traffic will be 355mt—of this, around 252.65mt, or 71%, will be destined for power projects.
“Coal has relatively lower density which makes wagon loading to optimum levels difficult. This axle load increase will help the industry to ferry greater tonnage of coal,” said Dipesh Dipu, a manager with accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.
India has a power generation capacity of 140,000MW and plans to add 78,577MW by 2012. The power sector has a coal requirement of around 350mt per annum at present.
“Of the new capacity except for 1,500MW, the entire coal linkage has been tied up. In order to transport this coal, the railways will have to increase their efficiency so that the power projects are adequately stocked with coal,” said a senior power ministry official, who asked not to be named.
“Increasing the axle load will help in reducing the transportation costs with the carrying capacity of the wagons increasing. However, the railways will have to increase the wagon availability for the power projects... Higher turnaround time...is also a concern,” said Y. Harish Chandra Prasad, chairman, Malaxmi Infra Ventures (India) Pvt. Ltd.
Prasad also announced the strengthening of the rail route infrastructure for coal supplies to power projects. For this, the government plans to spend Rs75,000 crore by 2016 to increase rail links by 20,000km to transport coal and iron ore.
In order to meet the demands of the power projects based in north India, the railways will also double the rail links on the Alwar-Rewari and Mughalsarai-Lucknow route.
The railways is also increasing the rail links on the Urkura-Bhatapara route and Bilaspur-Annupur route for higher and smoother traffic between the coal mining areas of Orissa’s Talcher and Ib Valley and Chhattisgarh’s Korba.

(http://www.livemint.com/2008/02/26235902/Railways-to-plan-for-future-wi.html?pg=1)