Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India

The Indian Railways have witnessed higher freight volumes without substantial investment in infrastructure, increased axle load, reduction of turn-around time of rolling stock, reduced unit cost of transportation, rationalization of tariffs resulting in improvement in market share and improved operational margins. Over the last 2 to 3 years, the railway freight traffic has grown by 8 to 11%, which is projected to cross 110 crore tonnes (110,000,000 t [108,300,000 long tons; 121,300,000 short tons]) by the end of 11th Five Year Plan.(Needs Updation)

GQFC has 6 DFCs, 2 are being implemented and the funding for the remaining 4 was approved in January 2018. The rail tracks linking four largest metropolitan cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata and two diagonals North-South Dedicated Freight Corridor (Delhi-Chennai) and East-West Dedicated Freight Corridor (Kolkata-Mumbai) are called the Golden Quadrilateral (GQFC). These carry 55% of the India Railway's freight traffic over a total 10,122 km (6,290 mi) route length. The line capacity utilisation on the existing highly saturated shared trunk routes of Howrah-Delhi on the Eastern Corridor and Mumbai-Delhi on the Western Corridor varies between 115% to 150%.[9][10] The surging requirement for the power generation requiring heavy coal movement, booming infrastructure construction and growing international trade has led to the conception of the GQFCs. Carbon emission reduction from DFCs will help DFCCIL claim carbon credits.

Green background for the systems that are under construction. Blue background for the systems that are currently in planning.

Indian Railways plans to convert 10,000 km of passenger and freight trunk routes into high-speed rail corridors over 10 years with total investment of ₹20 lakh crore (US$320 billion in 2019) and an annual investment of ₹2 lakh crore (US$32 billion in 2019) from 2017 to 2027, where half of the money will be spent on converting existing routes into high-speed corridors by leapfrogging the technology and the rest will be used to develop the stations and electronic signaling at the cost of ₹60 thousand crore (US$8.4 billion in 2020) to enable automated running of trains at a frequency of 5–6 minutes. Freight corridors of 3,300 km length will also be completed, freeing the dual use high demand trunk routes for running more high-speed passenger trains.[13]

Alternatively Indian Railways should use existing tracks to run Freight and passenger trains and should build 3rd, 4 lines for higher speeds or simply build tracks for semi high speed trains instead of DFC on High density routes.

This will be an optimal solution because new tracks with less curves, modern signalling, 40-50km average station spacing, capable of 160-240kmph operating speed and high gradient tracks will achieve

-> 120-150kmph average speed for express trains and..

-> 160-210kmph for Super Fast trains.

After shifting the express and super fast trains on to the new lines, the existing tracks can be used for both freight and medium distance local passenger train operations.

Because freight movement doesn't require speed like 160kmph, rather it needs Reliable Services. With supply chain optimization we can achieve that reliability.

• Rebuild overhead bridges to increase vertical and horizontal clearances.
• Raise overhead catenaries, minimum height to 7.45 m (24 ft 5 in) above rail.
• Widen track center spacing, minimum distance to 5.3 m (17 ft 5 in).
• Lengthening sidings/passing loops at every stations.
• Remove high platforms and replaced with longer low platforms.