Coal news and updates

Indian Railways to launch automatic programmer for rakes

July 21: In an attempt to resolve issues related to programming of rake loading, Indian Railways is set to introduce an on-line electronic mechanism, an official from the Railway Board said.

“The online-electronic mechanism will be particularly useful for tracking rakes meant for loading of coal from various sidings of subsidiaries of Coal India Ltd (CIL)),” the official said.

The pilot project of the on-line mechanism is scheduled to be launched within a few days, latest by July, the official added.

“This will be entirely internally developed software wherein users will be able to submit online programmes for rake loading and that will be linked to demand/allotment and supply,” the official said.

It is to be noted that effective May 25, 2014, the Railways charge a wagon registration fee at the time of registration of indents applicable to wagons of different gauges. The rate is Rs 1,500 per wagon for broad gauge, narrow gauge and metre gauge wagons or Rs 50,000 per rake for broad gauge and metre gauge and Rs 1,500 multiplied by the number of wagons in the rakes for narrow gauge.

This entire process is currently done manually but after introduction of on-line mechanism, the situation will be much better both for consumers and companies like CIL, the official said.