The Ministry of Railways on Wednesday (3 November) said that Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS) authorisation has been received for introduction of AC electric traction to and from Guwahati railway station, which is the biggest and busiest railway station in Northeast India.
With the CRS authorisation, Guwahati, which is also the biggest city of Northeast, is now literally connected with all metros and other big cities through 25KV AC traction, the ministry said.
It added that the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) has successfully completed Electrification work of total 649 route kilometre (RKM) from Katihar to Guwahati. This way Total HDN (High Density Network) routes (649 RKM) falling in NFR have been commissioned with Electric Traction, the ministry said.
It should be noted that the Northeast Frontier Railway has already started running trains with electric traction from the Kamakhya station with the arrival and departure of the Brahmaputra Mail with AC traction since 22 October last month.
With the completion of the electrification of the Guwahati station, other trains like Rajdhani Express, Tejas Rajdhani Express etc from Northeast can now be switched over to run on electric traction from Guwahati to the Delhi and other cities like Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata etc directly without change of traction en route, the ministry said.
This Electrification work will save country’s foreign exchange reserves which are spent on High Speed Diesel (HSD) oil, and will provide greener transportation and reduced carbon footprints, according to the ministry.
In addition to above, passenger trains with higher speed and heavier goods trains can be run, it added.