NEW DELHI: The Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Ltd (DFCCIL) conducted successful trial runs of two fully-loaded freight trains on the 343 km long Bhaupur-Khurja section of Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (EDFC) at a speed of 100 kmph.
The trial run was done on December 11.
The trains were remotely flagged-off from both Khurja and Bhaupur by DFCCIL’s outgoing MD R.N Singh along with newly-appointed MD Ravindra Kumar Jain in presence of Alstom India and South Asia MD Alain Spohr, and other Directors of DFCCIL.
The train attained a peak speed of 100 kmph on this 343 km stretch, which is the only fully functional DFC in the country and has been executed by Alstom.
Spohr said: “Congratulations to DFCCIL and kudos to our team at Alstom for doing a stellar job on this only electrified section of DFC.”
He said Alstom is proud to have introduced several ‘firsts’ in India to ensure speedy execution on this project.
“This is also a good reference of Alstom’s commitment to Make in India. The complete design and engineering for OHE Electrification, civil, power supply, signalling has been done indigenously. This begins a new era of freight rail revolution that all stakeholders envisioned jointly,” Spohr added.
In 2015, Alstom won the contract worth over 200 million euros to provide the electrification, signalling and telecommunications system for the 343-kilometre-long eastern portion of the Dedicated Freight Corridor.
As part of the contract, Alstom has also supplied state of the art signalling system, telecom system, construction of traction sub stations, station buildings and other civil works and has constructed one of the world’s largest Operations Control Centre (OCC) at Prayagraj monitoring operations on the entire eastern stretch of DFC.
The DFC is one of the largest rail infrastructure projects undertaken by the government. The overall cost is pegged at Rs 81,459 crore.
DFCCIL has been set up as a special purpose vehicle to undertake planning, development, mobilisation of financial resources, construction, maintenance and operation of the Dedicated Freight Corridors. In the first phase, the organisation is constructing the Western DFC (1,504 route km) and Eastern DFC (1,856 route km) spanning a total length of 3,360 route km.
Source: IANS
