The Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw inaugurated the country’s largest automobile cargo terminal, the Gati Shakti Multi-Modal Cargo Terminal at Maruti Suzuki’s Manesar facility in Haryana.
The terminal is expected to significantly enhance freight capacity and industrial logistics. It is connected to Patli railway station via a ten-kilometre dedicated rail corridor, a component of the 121.7-kilometre Haryana Orbital Rail Corridor developed by the Haryana Rail Infrastructure Development Corporation (HRIDC). Vaishnaw noted that 108 Multimodal Cargo terminals are now ready and will soon be in service.
Spread over 46 acres inside the MSIL Manesar facility, the railway siding features a fully electrified corridor having four full-length tracks for rakes and one track for engine escape, totalling 8.2 kilometres of track length. The siding also includes a two-floor station building, a dedicated pathway for guards and drivers along the tracks, advanced electronic train interlocking and many more. Models manufactured at MSIL’s Gurugram and Manesar facilities will be dispatched to 17 hubs from this railway siding serving 380 cities across India.
Port locations of Mundra and Pipavav, used by the company for exports, will also be served. The railway siding will have a dispatch capability of 450,000 vehicles at full capacity. Speaking at the inauguration of the railway siding facility at Maruti Plant in Manesar, Haryana, Ashwini Vaishnav said that to upgrade passenger trains, 16 and 20-coach Main Line EMU trains will be manufactured.
Till now, MEMUs were manufactured with 8 or 12 coaches. This project will be implemented in a new factory being started in Kazipet, Telangana. This will provide great relief for short-distance travel.
Last year, 7.2 billion passengers travelled by rail and 1617 million tonnes of goods were carried. The freight corridor is now fully operational and about 400 freight trains are running on it every day. Vaishnaw further said that the Bikaner Division has started publishing the chart 24 hours in advance (it was four hours in advance, earlier) as an innovative initiative. It reduced uncertainty among the passengers and facilitated them in making better plans.
