Central Railway has set-up Business Development Units (BDUs) at Zonal and Divisional level. These BDUs aggressively market new proposals and flexible schemes with local industries and aggregate their demands.
In such initiatives one-to-one meetings conducted with major automobile industries such as M/s Mahindra & Mahindra, M/s Tata Motors M/s Maruti Udyog etc. for transportation of cars, pick-up vans, tractors, jeeps etc.
As a result, the automobile industry is more interested and willing for transportation by Rail. This can be seen evident from the loading figures of automobiles during current financial year. The loading facilities for transportation of automobiles developed at Kalamboli on Mumbai Division, Nashik Road on Bhusaval Division, Chinchwad station on Pune Division, Bale station on Solapur Division and Ajni station on Nagpur Division.
Central Railway has loaded 32 rakes of Automobiles during the month of February 2021 as against 12 rakes loaded during corresponding month of last year i.e. February 2020, showing an increase of 166%.
During the current financial year also i.e. from April 2020 to February 2021 the Automobile loading registered 246 rakes as against 118 rakes loaded during corresponding period of last year i.e. April-2019 to February 2020. The loading during the current year shows an increase of 146% over last year.
The dispatches of automobile were made to various parts of the country and even export to Bangladesh. Railways this move also saves precious fuel and earing carbon footprint.
During one such interaction of BDUs with manufacturers of automobiles, their suggestions were also welcomed.
In this direction, Parel workshop of Central Railway has developed a prototype coach for carrying automobiles for easier loading of automobiles and increased speed potential by considering the suggestions put forth by Manufacturers.
