All trains on Manglauru-Shoranur route to have electric locomotives

Mangaluru, Dec 11: Railways will now be able to operate its traffic between Mangaluru and Kerala’s Shoranur entirely using electric locomotives with the long-awaited project to charge the electric feeder substation at the Uppala railway station to be executed by December.

The project gets a boost with the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) affirming that finishing touches are under way to charge the feeder substation by supplying 5 MW power.

It is expected to help Railways save up on fuel and augment speed of the trains moving along the 307-km-long Mangaluru-Shoranur stretch.

Having completed the complex 3-metre-deep horizontal pit to lay the high tension cables up to the feeder sub-station, the KSEB personnel are now working overtime to inspect the underground cable joint junctions.

The work was expected to be over by December 15 and the feeder sub-station, in all probability, could be charged by this month itself, P. Subbanna Naik, Assistant Executive Engineer attached to the KSEB’s Kubanur section, told The Hindu here on Friday.

“The Railway authorities concerned, on their part, are in regular touch with the KSEB unit here to ascertain the progress of the works and we have given firm assurance that the works could be executed by December,” he said.

A senior Railway official, in-charge of the track electrification works, had assured that the feeder substation at Uppala would enable Railways to run the passenger and freight traffic entirely on electric locomotives up to Mangaluru.

The power supply augmentation would also help Railways explore options to run more short-distance passenger and MEMU trains in future.

The feeder sub-station was scheduled to have been put into operational mode as early as May last, barely two months after the substation at Charvathur station got commissioned in March enabling Railways to run at least five pairs of express trains using electric locomotives.

The cable-laying works suffered a jolt after the National Highway Authority of India officials, in their bid to ensure smooth vehicular movement on the parallel road, urged the State electricity utility to suspend the works till end of monsoon period.