The Oxygen Express carrying tankers of liquid oxygen reached Nashik in Maharashtra on Saturday morning. Four oxygen tankers were offloaded from the Roll-on Roll-off (RORO) and then transported to oxygen plants via road.
The freight train carrying seven oxygen tankers had left Navi Mumbai on April 19 and returned to Nagpur on Friday 8pm after filling the tankers with oxygen at Vishakhapatnam. Three of the tankers were downloaded at Nagpur while the remaining were delivered to Nashik around 10am on Saturday.
Ruling Shiv Sena has said the train took much more time (to reach Nashik) when the state needed the oxygen on urgent basis for Covid-19 patients.
Central Railway (CR) which ran the train, however, clarified that the shortest route possible could not be availed due to technical problems. CR said the route of the RORO service — in which goods vehicles are put on freight train — had to be planned considering various constraints like ghat sections, road overbridges (ROB), tunnels, curves, platform canopies and over-head equipment (OHE).
“Height is an important aspect in this movement. Railways mapped the route via Vasai. The distance between Kalamboli and Vizag is more than 1,850 kms, which was completed by these tankers only in about 50 hours. Transportation of oxygen through trains is faster for long distances than road transport. Trains can run 24 hours in a day but truck drivers need to take halts etc. The green corridor is created for faster movement of these tankers, and monitoring of movement was done at the apex level,” said a statement from CR.
The Oxygen Express reached Nagpur in Maharashtra with seven liquid medical oxygen tankers on Friday evening. Three tankers were unloaded at Nagpur railway station. Of the three tankers, two headed for Nagpur city and one headed to Amaravati.
Source : Hindustan Times
