Indian Railways in nation’s service during covid crisis! Around 200 Oxygen Expresses complete journey

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, oxygen relief by these train services reached out to 13 states.

So far, Indian Railways has delivered around 12630 MT of Liquid Medical Oxygen (LMO) in more than 775 tankers to various states. Nearly 200 Oxygen Express trains have completed their journey till now and brought relief to various parts of the country. According to a statement issued by the Railway Ministry on 20 May 2021, ten loaded Oxygen Express trains were on run with more than 784 MT of life-saving gas in as many as 45 tankers. These trains have been delivering LMO of over 800 MT to the nation each day now. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, oxygen relief by these train services reached out to 13 states namely Uttarakhand, Kerala, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi.

According to the ministry, 521 MT of oxygen has been offloaded in the state of Maharashtra, 320 MT of oxygen in Uttarakhand, nearly 3189 MT of oxygen in Uttar Pradesh, 521 MT of oxygen in Madhya Pradesh, 1549 MT of oxygen in Haryana, 772 MT of oxygen in Telangana, 98 MT of oxygen in Rajasthan, 641 MT of oxygen in Karnataka, 584 MT of oxygen in Tamil Nadu, 111 MT of oxygen in Punjab, 118 MT of oxygen in Kerala, 292 MT of oxygen in Andhra Pradesh, and more than 3915 MT of oxygen in the national capital.

The national transporter is said to be picking up oxygen from places such as Hapa and Mundra in the West and Durgapur, Rourkela, Angul, Tatanagar in the East and then delivering it to the states of Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Haryana, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Delhi in complex operational route planning scenarios.

Indian Railways, to ensure that oxygen relief reaches the destination in the fastest time possible, is setting up new standards and unprecedented benchmarks in running of Oxygen Express trains. These critical freight trains’ average speed is way above 55 in most cases over long distances. Indian Railways is running Oxygen Express trains on high priority Green Corridor, with the highest sense of priority. Also, technical halts have been reduced to one minute over different sections for crew changes.