The Indian Railway on Friday said that so far, it has delivered nearly 7900 MT of Liquid Medical Oxygen (LMO) in 500 tankers to 12 states during the past 20 days. The Oxygen Expresses started their deliveries 20 days back on April 24 in Maharashtra with a load of 126 MT of LMO.
Indian Railways is picking up Oxygen from places like Hapa and Mundra in the West and Rourkela, Durgapur, Tatanagar, Angul in the East and then delivering it to States of Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Telangana, Punjab, Kerala, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh in complex operational route planning scenarios.
In order to ensure that Oxygen relief reaches in the fastest time possible, Railways is creating new standards and unprecedented benchmarks in running of Oxygen Express ‘Freight Trains’. The average speed of these critical Freight trains is way above 55 KMPH in most cases over long distances and running on high priority ‘Green Corridor’ with a highest sense of urgency, operational teams of various Zones are working round the clock in most challenging circumstances to ensure that Oxygen reaches in fastest possible time frame, to their designated destinations.
Technical stoppages have been reduced to one minute for crew changes over different sections while tracks have been kept open and high alertness has been maintained to ensure that Oxygen Express keeps zipping through in such a manner that speed of other freight trains operations are not affected. In this connection, the first Oxygen Expresses for Andhra Pradesh and Kerala are on their way to with 40 MT and 118 MT of Oxygen relief respectively whereas the first Oxygen Express to Tamil Nadu delivered 80 MT this morning and the second Oxygen Express is also on its way.
Informing that a total of 130 Oxygen Expresses have completed their journey so far and brought relief to various States, the Railway officials have further said that as of now 462 MT of Oxygen has been offloaded in Maharashtra, nearly 2210 MT in Uttar Pradesh, 408 MT in Madhya Pradesh, 1228 MT in Haryana, 308 MT in Telangana, 72 MT in Rajasthan, 120 MT in Karnataka, 80 MT in Uttarakhand, 80 MT in Tamil Nadu and more than 2934 MT in Delhi.
Describing that running of Oxygen Express as a very dynamic exercise, the officials also said that it has mapped different routes with Oxygen supply locations and keeps itself ready with any emerging need of the States. States provide tankers to the Indian Railways for bringing LMO. The Indian Railways indeed deserves all adulation for taking such a humanitarian initiative with benevolence and in the right spirit.
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