New Delhi: The delivery of Liquid Medical Oxygen by the Indian Railways surpassed 20,000 MT on Saturday. So far, 305 'Oxygen Express' freight services were undertaken by the railways.
The railways transported 1,237 tankers, ferrying 20,770 MT of LMO to 15 States amid the second wave of the COVID19 crisis.
At the moment, six Oxygen Express freight trains hauling 26 tankers with 420 MT of LMO are racing to various locations across the country.
On Saturday, Assam received its third Oxygen Express with 80 MT of LMO in four tankers. Among the Southern States, separate deliveries weighing more than 1,600 MT were received by Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Telangana.
As per the official data, 614 MT of Oxygen has been offloaded in Maharashtra, nearly 3,731 MT in Uttar Pradesh, 656 MT in Madhya Pradesh, 5,327 MT in Delhi, 1,967 MT in Haryana, 98 MT in Rajasthan, 1,994 MT in Karnataka, 320 MT in Uttarakhand, 1,735 MT in Tamil Nadu, 1,668 MT in Andhra Pradesh, 225 MT in Punjab, 380 MT in Kerala, 1,770 MT in Telangana, 38 MT in Jharkhand and 240 MT in Assam.
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At present, Oxygen Expresses are delivering LMO at 41 stations in the 39 cities including more populous destinations like Lucknow, Varanasi, Agra, Nagpur, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Faridabad, Gurugram, Delhi Cantonment, Kota, Bengaluru, Dehradun, Nellore, Visakhapatnam, Ernakulam, Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, Bhatinda, Kamrup and Ranchi.
Railways mapped different routes with Oxygen supply locations and keep itself ready with any emerging need of the States. States provide tankers to the Indian Railways for bringing LMO.
To deliver oxygen to the states, Indian Railways is loading its trains from Oxygen plants at Hapa, Baroda, Mundra, Rourkela, Durgapur, Tatanagar Junction and Angul.
The average speed of these critical freight trains is way above 55 Kmph in most cases. Railway is running these trains on high-priority Green Corridor, with a sense of urgency. Technical stoppages have been reduced to 1 minute for crew changes over different sections.
All this is done in a manner that speed of other Freight Operation is not affected as well, Ministry of Railways said in an official statement.
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