Railway Board plans to improve various rail routes to 160 kmph

The Railway Board has instructed all zones of Indian Railways to prepare detailed project reports (DPRs) for improving various routes to 160 km/h.

The zones have been instructed to present the DPRs in two months' time.

In a circular issued to all general managers on November 3, the Railway Council has in principle given permission to increase the speed of trains to 160 km per hour. In 2017, when Suresh Prabhu was Minister of Railways, the decision was taken. With the exception of a few routes, it was not run.

The DPRs must have been asked to cover these projects in the general budget the following year. In addition, the eight routes with a length of 9,268 km across the country cover 2,164 km Delhi-Chennai and 1,965 km Mumbai-Howrah routes via Maharashtra.

North Central Railway (NCR) and South East Central Railway (SECR) have been urged to create the DPR for the Delhi-Chennai and Mumbai-Howrah routes respectively. Once installed, the travel time of trains on these routes is drastically reduced.

The 160 km/h upgrade on the Mumbai-Delhi and Delhi-Howrah routes was approved in 2017-18. The work is underway and is expected to be completed between 2023-2024.

In the past three years, the speed limits in various parts of the Golden Quadrangle and the Golden Diagonal have been upgraded to 130 km/h compared to the previous 110 km/h.

SECR's senior division commercial manager (SrDCM), Vikas Kumar Kashyap, told media that the SECR has improved its tracks to allow express or mail trains to run at 130 km/h between Nagpur-Durg.

According to Kashyap, this work includes ramps, realigning curves, reinforcing tracks, modifying overhead electrical lines (OHEs), track panels, maintenance, removing all unmanned level crossings, etc.

The SrDCM said to improve the tracks after the engineering department will make a DPR with input from other departments such as commercial and signalling.

Central Railway Spokesperson & ACM Vijay Thool told the media that Central Railway has yet to improve its tracks to allow trains to run at a speed of 130 km per hour. The express or postal trains travel at 110 km/h while Rajdhanis travel at 120 km/h. Trials for 130 km/h are underway.