Q. What are CONCOR depots and where are they located?

July 16, 2019, 2:07 PM

CONCOR (Container Corporation of India) operates several container depots throughout the country. As of [1/00] there were 31 Inland Container Depots (ICDs) with facilities for international freight and connected to ports. These are classified based on whether or not they have a Container Freight Station (CFS), and whether they are equipped to handle port freight. A CFS facility allows freight to be loaded / unloaded to or from containers, and aggregated or distributed; at an ICD without a CFS, containers can only be routed to different destinations without being opened and loaded or unloaded.

There are 9 depots with facilities only for domestic freight, known as Domestic Container Terminals (DCTs). Some of the depots are purely road-fed (Pithampur in Indore, Mulund in Mumbai, Milavittan in Tuticorin, Babarpur in Panipat, and Malanpur in Gwalior), but the rest are connected to IR’s rail network. Some 35-40 rail corridors on IR have been identified for fast containerized goods services (CONTRACK).

Some of CONCOR’s container depots are listed below (this is not a comprehensive list!):

Inland Container Depots with CFS (Container Freight Stations)
- Tughlakabad (New Delhi)
- Whitefield (Bangalore)
- Sanatnagar (Hyderabad)
- Coimbatore
- Nagpur
- New Mulund (Mumbai)
- Mulund (Mumbai)
- Belaganj (Agra)
- Tondiarpet (Chennai)
- Amingaon (Guwahati)
- Anaparthi
- Guntur
- Chirala
- Moradabad (at site of former steam shed)
- Sabarmati (Ahmedabad)
- Madurai
- Pithampur (Indore)
- Malivitan (Tuticorin)
- Baburpur (Panipat)
- Daulatabad (Aurangabad)
- Malanpur (Gwalior)
- Mandideep (Bhopal)
- Mirzapur (UP) [2006]
- Sonepat (Haryana) [2006]
- Dhapad (Punjab) [2006]

Inland Container Depots without CFS (Container Freight Stations)
- Dhandarikalan (Ludhiana)
- Wadi Bunder (Mumbai)
- Chinchwad (Pune)
- Cochin
- Cossipore (Calcutta)
- Surat SEZ

Port-side Container Terminals
- Madras Harbour
- Kakinada
- Kandla
- Cossipore Road (Calcutta)
- Haldia (Calcutta)
- Shalimar (Calcutta).

Domestic Container Terminals
- Tughlakabad (New Delhi)
- Dhandarikalan (Ludhiana)
- Whitefield (Bangalore)
- Salem Market
- Tondiarpet (Chennai)
- Cossipore Road (Calcutta)
- Shalimar (Calcutta)
- Kankaria (Ahmedabad)
- Wadi Bunder (Mumbai)
- Fathua (Patna) [1/03]

Proposed container terminals… [2/02]
- Balasore
- Bhusawal
- Raipur
- Vadodara
- Kanpur
- Jamshedpur
- Jaipur
- Jodhpur
- Rajkot
- Turbhe (Mumbai)
- Miraj
- Dadri
- Ankleshwar
- Shalimar / Kolkata (proposed additional ICD)
- New Delhi (additional terminal)
- Arakkonam (under construction)
- Pondicherry (under construction)
- Tatanagar (under construction)

Proposed container terminals… [5/05]
- Varanasi
- Vishakhapatnam
- Khodiyar (extension of Sabarmati ICD)

Recently [4/10] an International Container Traffic Terminal (ICTT) has been opened at Vallarpadam near Kochi.

Marshalling Yards

Q. Where are the important marshalling and stabling yards?

Most of the bigger stations that are junctions or termini for various routes have large yards for stabling and marshalling rakes. E.g., Chennai Central homes rakes for many trains originating from there. Pune has a fairly large yard, as does Ernakulam. The Juhi marshalling yard is pretty big as well.

Mughalsarai is the biggest marshalling yard in Asia, capable of handling over 6,000 wagons a day. It may also be the biggest marshalling yard in the world; it appears [need confirmation] that the only one bigger was the one at Ulm, Germany, which was destroyed in Allied bombings in the second world war.

A (partial) list of marshalling or classification yards follows [12/01]. Those marked with ‘?’ are based on uncertain information. Numbers indicate the numbers of tracks available for classification operations. ‘Flat’ indicates a classification yard known to be flat (not a hump yard). Marshalling / classification yards (especially hump yards) for freight wagons have been in decline since the 1980s with the increasing tendency to use block rakes for goods. (See below for a list of closed yards.)

Ambala Cantt.?
Andal (mechanized hump yard with retarders)
Bardhaman (flat)
Bayappanahalli
Bhilai (mechanized hump yard with retarders)
Bhusawal (16+14)
Bokaro Steel City (40, may have retarders?)
Bondamunda (27, mechanized hump yard with retarders)
Chitpur (flat)
Cuttack?
Dankuni (flat)
Daund
Erode?
Ghorpadi (flat; hump closed)
Hirarpur?
Itarsi?
Jamshedpur (mechanized hump yard with retarders)
Jasai (near Uran; flat; for petroleum tankers)
Juhi (18)
Kalyan? (for Mumbai)
Kurla (for Mumbai)
Mangalore?
Marippalam? (for Vishakhapatnam).
Maula Ali? (BG)
Mughalsarai (48+37, mechanized hump yard with retarders)
Naihati (18) (flat; hump yard closed)
New Katni Jn.
Nimpura (mechanized hump yard with retarders)
Pune
Ratlam?
Sanatnagar (for Secunderabad)
Shalimar
Surat?
Tikiapara
Tondiarpet Dn (hump)
Tughlakabad (mechanized hump yard with retarders)
Vijayawada (mechanized hump yard with retarders)
Wadala (for Mumbai)
Wadi
Waltair (Vishakhapatnam)

ER’s Dhanbad and Asansol divisions’ coal yards have small hump yards, (Pathardih, Kusunda, Kathrasgarh, Sitarampur, etc.), which are becoming obsolete as coal (as is the case with other freight) now moves increasingly in block rakes.

For information on hump yards worldwide including Indian yards, check the Yahoo Group on Hump Yards. There are several satellite photographs of hump yards available in the links section of that group.

Q. Have any marshalling yards been closed down?

Yes, many marshalling yards have been closed over the years, especially since the 1980s, with the move towards using block rakes that do not need to be broken up and re-classified all the time. A list of closed yards is given below.

Central Railway