Railways' RoRo service to power Tripura out of fuel crisis

Fulfilling the promise made by Railway Minister Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu at Agartala on 1st August to help the state of Tripura mitigate the fuel crisis, the Northeast Frontier Railway will start a Roll On Roll Off (RoRo) service to carry trucks loaded with fuel on flat-wagon goods train on Thursday. 

In the first lot 30 DBKM (flat bedded) wagons with each having a capacity to carry two loaded trucks will be placed at Bhanga. Fuel tanker trucks will be loaded on these by means of an end-loading ramp. The tankers will be securely fixed on the wagon floor to ensure safety during movement. The first such goods train will leave Bhanga near Badarpur at 11.00 hrs to reach Churaibari in Tripura 44 km away. 

The road connecting Tripura with Assam had been in very poor shape creating serious bottleneck in transportation of commodities including fuel into Tripura. This had resulted in serious fuel crisis in Tripura. The RoRo scheme introduced by the Railways will help the loaded trucks to piggyback on goods train to bypass the damaged national highway near Churaibari. This will bring much relief to the common man in Tripura. The RoRo service, first introduced in Konkan Railway in 1999, is being introduced in NF Railway for the first time. 

Although military movement have been done in the past on flat wagons, this is for the first time that commercial goods movement is being done by RoRo mode. The road condition in remote areas often gets affected during inclement weather in NE. RoRo will prove to be a novel means to help continue supply lines in times of crisis. The service is designed to provide connectivity to loaded road vehicles where road connectivity is poor or does not exist.