The Oxygen Express that departed from Tatanagar in Jharkhand on Saturday evening will become the first oxygen supplying train to arrive in Assam on Sunday.
The oxygen express carrying four containers of 80 tonnes of the Liquid Medical Oxygen (LMO) will reach the Inland Container Depot at Amingaon in Kamrup.
As per the latest update, the train is expected to reach Amingaon at 10.30 am. It has already left the Bongaigaon station.
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on thanking the central government informed that the Centre had sent four oxygen tankers for the state and other northeastern states.
So far, as many as 224 Oxygen Expresses have supplied the over 800 MT LMO to various states.
Of the many states, oxygen relief has already been supplied to Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Telangana, Punjab, Kerala, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh.
Oxygen Expresses started delivering since April 24, starting from Maharashtra, with a load of 126 metric tonnes.
It has till date offloaded 614 metric tonnes of Oxygen in Maharashtra, nearly 3,463 metric tonnes in Uttar Pradesh, 566 metric tonnes in Madhya Pradesh, 4,278 metric tonnes in Delhi, 1,698 metric tonnes in Haryana, 98 metric tonnes in Rajasthan, 943 metric tonnes in Karnataka, 320 metric tonnes in Uttarakhand, 769 metric tonnes in Tamil Nadu, 571 metric tonnes in Andhra Pradesh, 153 metric tonnes in Punjab, 246 metric tonnes in Kerala and 772 metric tonnes in Telangana.
Further LMO has been picked from places like Hapa, Baroda, Mundra in the West and Rourkela, Durgapur, Tatanagar, Angul in the East.
Reports stated that the average speed of these critical freight trains is way above 55 in most cases over long distances.
Running on high priority Green Corridor, with the highest sense of urgency, operational teams of various zones are working round the clock in most challenging circumstances to ensure that Oxygen reaches the fastest possible time frame.
Technical stoppages have been reduced to 1 minute for crew changes over different sections.
Moreover, tracks are kept open and high alertness is maintained to ensure that Oxygen Express keeps zipping through.
All this is done in a manner that the speed of other freight operations doesn't get reduced as well.
