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What is the state of intermodal transportation in India? Are roadrailers, road trailers on rails, etc. used in India?

July 18, 2019, 1:22 PM
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Currently [7/00] a trial Wabash / Kirloskar roadrailer runs between Konkan Railway (or JNPT) and Nagpur. Konkan Railway has also made some trials of TOFC (trailer on flat car). Intermodal cars are used quite a bit. They are configured with 6 trucks for 5 cars, but double-stacking is not used as the floor height of the cars is usually the same as for regular COFC (container on flat car) services. CONCOR does have flat cars with low bed height for Tallboy containers. (Currently [2/02] around 1875 flat cars in its fleet; to increase by another 1000 or more in 2002.)

Spine cars, well cars, freight DMUs, CargoSprinter, etc. are not in use in India currently. [7/00]

Konkan Railway pioneered the ‘roll-on, roll-off’ (‘RORO’ or ‘RO-RO’) concept in India on its route between Mumbai (Kolad) and Goa (Verna). Starting in 1999 with 5 trucks being transported at a time, today [1/05] the service handles 50 trucks on its route each day. In this service, trucks belonging to commercial private trucking companies loaded with their goods drive on to a rake of flat cars and are carried (trucks and their cargo, and their drivers!) by train to the destination where they simply drive off the train; this obviously eliminates a lot of time lost in intermodal transshipment. Loading and unloading at either end can be as short as 10-15 minutes. The RORO rake normally achieves speeds of about 75km/h. The Kolad-Verna stretch takes about 10 hours with RORO while it can be a full day’s driving or more if the trucks take the road instead. The trucks are restricted to 25 tonnes for 2-axle trucks and 40 tonnes for 4-axle trucks. RORO service is also available now until Mangalore (Surathkal) on the KR route. Recently [7/04] it was proposed that KR get monopoly rights to operate such RORO services on the rest of the IR network. Mumbai-Ahmedabad and Mumbai-Kochi are said to be among the routes being considered for this.

Source – IFRCA.org

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