Indian Railways - The Largest Logistics Network in Asia. - Part I

 Indian Railways – The Largest Logistics Network in Asia (Part I)

The 170 years old railway network initially designed by the British, is one of the largest Rail networks in the world. With the widely distributed network and having more than 8500 stations, the carrier is the most preferred mode of transportation for majority of Indians.

However, the last mile delivery is always fulfilled by road, the charges and the time taken by IR for transportation of Goods & Passengers, makes it the most economical mode of transportation for long distances.

Goods like Coal, Cement, Automobiles, Oil & Gas, Military Equipment, Iron & other heavy metals were transported by railways from early times. Recently even the automobile manufacturers understood the fact and have started to employ IR instead of Road for distributing their finished goods all over the country. Majority of the Revenue for IR comes from the freight trains that it operates, as compared to the Passenger Segment.

As of now same set of infrastructures mainly tracks are being used for transporting both Goods & Passengers across the country and hence there was an evident delay in both the services. Generally, as we must have observed, the passenger trains are given more preference and goods trains are made to halt at a particular station for hours together. Also, since the limited and same tracks are used for both the services, IR is not able to serve either of its customer segments to the best of its capability.

With the recent announcement of Dedicated Rail Freight Corridor, the work for which is in progress, it is believed that IR will be able to serve both its customers (Goods & Passengers) very efficiently. Also, it will reduce the load on the service department of the IR.

The locomotives, wagons and staff requirements for both the segments are very different, wherein for Goods the locomotives used are: WAG 9, WAG 9H, WAG 7 WDG 4, etc. and the Wagons are Flat Bed, BOXHN, Oil Tankers, etc. for the Passenger Segment it is WAP 4, WAP 5, WAP 7, WDM 3A, etc. and ICF (Seating & Sleeper) and LHB rakes are used.

It is hence understood that any major stations en-route the journey should have the minimum spares requirements for all the machines that are being used, which are not same for both the segments, hence segregation based on traffic, and the resources used is a good way of ensuring the best service to both the segments.

In this article I have introduced the Asia’s largest logistics network used for transporting both Goods & Passengers. In the next article I will be talking about how does IR manage such a complex network with minimum faults.

Next Article will talk about The Zones of IR.