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Eastern Railway records highest ever originating freight loading

During the recently concluded financial year 2014-15, Eastern Railway (ER) achieved its best ever freight loading for any fiscal since bifurcation. Its originating revenue loading reached 67.247 mt, surpassing the Railway Board’s target of 65 mt by 3.46 per cent and the previous fiscal’s (2013-14) loading of 62.578 mt by 7.46 per cent. The originating freight earning was Rs 5596.16 crore in 2014-15 compared with Rs 4881.1 crore in 2013-14, marking an incremental growth of Rs 715.06 crore, ie 14.65 per cent higher than financial year 2013-14.

During 2014-15, Eastern Railway also took several steps to increase passenger comfort and plans a plethora of initiatives in the current financial year (2015-16). At present Eastern Railway has 95 automatic ticket vending machines (ATVM) at all important stations and plans to install 75 more  card and coin-based machines (CoTVM) at 54 stations. As many as 56 Jansadharan Ticket Booking Sewa (JTBS) are available at 41 serving stations with 63 counters over Eastern Railway. Passengers wanting to avoid long queues can avail of journey tickets from the JTBS counters outside the station area. Eastern Railway also commissioned 36 Station Ticket Booking Sewa (STBS) by deploying personnel for issuing tickets on outsourcing basis during 2014-15. In addition, it plans to install Yatri Ticket Suvidha Kendras (YTSKs) and more Exact Fare Specific Destination Single Adult ticket counters in 2015-16.

New PRS counter has been opened at Port Blair, a PRS-cum-UTS counter at Majdia and the existing PRS counter at Deoghar Satsang has been recently upgraded to a PRS-cum-UTS counter.

The Web Based Refund System and National Electronic Fund Transfer System (NEFT) has been introduced and Eastern Railway has finalised 55,561 ticket refund cases during the last financial year.

Plans Extended platforms at Sealdah, Howrah
Eastern Railway has decided to improve infrastructure inputs by extension of platforms both at Howrah and Sealdah stations in a phased manner for which drawings have been prepared and action has been taken for floating tenders. In the Sealdah Division, the construction of the Dum Dum flyover, early completion of loop at New Garia station and running of 12-car locals from platforms 2, 3, 4 and 4A at Sealdah station have been planned. The Kulpi block in the Lakshmikantapur-Namkhana section too will be developed. 
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