Indian Railways on Saturday said it has used the nationwide lockdown period to complete its long pending maintenance works.
“Apart from ensuring supply chains all essential commodities running through parcel trains and freight trains, Indian Railways executed these long pending maintenance works during this lockdown period when passenger services were suspended due to COVID -19,” the Railways said in a statement.
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It also said it has completed its long pending overdue maintenance work during the lockdown period by considering it ‘Once in a lifetime opportunity’.
Some of the successfully executed long pending maintenance works of the Indian Railways include yard remodelling, renewal of scissors crossover and repair of bridges.
“These works were pending for several years and were confronting Railways with severe bottlenecks,” it stated.
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Around 500 modern heavy duty track maintenance machines along with track, signal & overhead equipment (OHE) maintainers have worked regularly for 10749 machine days to complete overdue track maintenance of 12270 km plain track and 5263 numbers of turn outs, the Railways said.
Health of the track has been monitored through periodic runs of Oscillation Monitoring System (OMS) cumulating 1,92,488 km of track at 5362 peak locations indicated by OMS test has been attended to ensure proper quality, it added.
Ultrasonic flaw detection (USFD) of 30182 km of track and 1,34,443 rail welds has been carried out with USFD machine.
Critical summer precaution activities like de-stressing of long welded rail (LWR) which involved huge manpower has been taken up with a new procedure for carrying out the work with ensuring social distancing norms.
A total of 2,246 km of de-stressing of LWR has been done, the Railways stated.