South Central Railway to boost rail infrastructure in Telangana

In a bid to boost the rail infrastructure in Telangana, the South Central Railway with an enhanced budget this year, of Rs 1,813 crore is making plans to implement a number of infrastructure augmentation works.

The works include removal of unmanned level crossings, electrification of lines, replacement of worn out tracks, doubling and tripling of lines, and so on.

The most crucial one is, however, the works on new lines in Telangana - 32 km from Manoharabad to Gajwel on the 150 km-Manoharabad-Kothapally route. This is an alternative route to Karimnagar and the route would pass via the three Assembly constituencies of Gajwel, Sircilla, and Siddipet.

The works on the new line from Akkannapet to Medak, of 17 km is expected to be completed this fiscal.

According to the SCR officials, the entire rail network would be electrified. With about 6,000 km route, the SCR zone has electrified 3,000 km and the sanction has come forth for electrification of the rest, thus doing away with the system of diesel traction.

Coming to Telangana, 1,100 km have been electrified so far of the total 1,822 route km and the rest is to be completed in three to four years.

With regard to safety, the Unmanned level crossings (UMLC) are becoming history as SCR had 136 of 238 removed with Telangana only remaining with seven unmanned crossings.

They are aiming for the replacement of worn out tracks, 300 km of old tracks were replaced last year, with the target for 2018-19 being 400 km.