Guwahati, the largest city in the northeast, was brought under the electrified rail network, with the first train – a parcel van – reaching Kamakhya station from New Cooch Behar in West Bengal on October 21.
Kamakhya station is on the western edge of Guwahati and about 6 km from the central Guwahati railway station.
Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) officials said the arrival of the parcel van at Kamakhya station was a major step towards the electrification of all the main and branch lines across the region. This would also translate into huge savings for NFR, one of the costliest zones for Indian Railways because of expenditure on diesel locomotives and maintenance of tracks and railway facilities on tough terrain.
“With the completion of railway electrification and commissioning of the section up to Kamakhya, trains will now come directly from New Delhi and Kolkata on electric traction without change of locomotive en route,” NFR spokesperson Guneet Kaur said.
Till October 21, electric locomotives of trains from the rest of the country had to be detached at Cooch Behar and a diesel locomotive attached for the onward journey.
So far, 1,701 track km has been electrified on the NFR by the Central Organisation for Railway Electrification and Rail Vikas Nigam Limited.
Railway officials said the electrification work had expanded east of Guwahati to central Assam’s Lumding, about 180 km away. The section was likely to be energised by March 2022.
The 6 km section between Kamakhya and Guwahati railway stations, however, has a couple of bottlenecks – two old overbridges that are too low for the electric wires to string above the tracks.
