Amid the national lockdown imposed to contain coronavirus, the South Central Railway (SCR) said on Saturday that it had bettered its own record of transporting food grains to various states -- in April, 457 rakes were loaded in the zone and 12.3 lakh tonnes of food grains transported. It is around six times the volumes loaded during the same period last year.

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An SCR official said that SCR accomplished an incremental loading of 522% in April. The official said that the zone chalked out plans for effective utilization of freight and parcel trains by prioritising on the transportation of food grains traffic.

SCR Officials also coordinated with the Food Corporation of India, local authorities and private traders for movement of food grains by trains.

Further, this critical effort has also ensured that this essential farm produce transportation is not impacted due to the lockdown and the contribution of Railways in transferring the food grains from the farms to kitchens continues, a statement from SCR said.

The food grain rakes are loaded from different segments of the zone, spread across Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. In Telangana, the loading stations include Nizamabad, Warangal, Kazipet, Miryalaguda, Nekkonda, Karimnagar, Peddapalli, Khammam. In Andhra Pradesh too, the loading took place at Rajahmundry, Samalkota, Nidadavolu, Eluru, Vijayawada, Gudivada, Machilipatnam, Tanuku and Palakollu.

The rakes were mainly transported to various locations in Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. Innovative measures such as operating Jaikisan trains by clubbing two freight trains at common junction and running them on a single path, to take advantage of non-running of passenger trains, also helped in achieving the objective