An all-women crew was in the engine room of an Indian Railways special train bringing much needed medical oxygen to Covid patients in Bengaluru.
Disclosing this on his Twitter, the Railway Minister Piyush Goyal posted: “The 7th Oxygen Express to Karnataka has arrived in Bengaluru from Tatanagar (Jamshedpur) on Friday. This Oxygen Express train piloted by an all female crew will ensure continued supply of oxygen for COVID-19 patients in the State.”
The 7th #OxygenExpress to Karnataka has arrived in Bengaluru from Tatanagar.
This Oxygen Express train piloted by an all female crew will ensure continued supply of Oxygen for COVID-19 patients in the State. pic.twitter.com/UFWgKwVyuZ
— Piyush Goyal (@PiyushGoyal) May 22, 2021
This train arrived in Bengaluru with 120 metric tonnes of medical oxygen from Jamshedpur and it was piloted by the all-female crew from Jolarpettai in neighbouring Tamil Nadu to Bengaluru on Friday. The crew included, loco pilot Sireesha Gajini and assistant loco pilot Aparna R P.
Talking to PTI news agency, the Chief Public Relations Officer of South Western Railway said, "All-women crew piloting an Oxygen Express is rare because we don't have many women loco-pilots in Railways."
The women crew of Oxygen Exp;ress (Pic: Courtesy starofmysore.com)
Meanwhile, the Indian Railways have continuously running Oxygen Express service bringing relief by delivering Liquid Medical Oxygen (LMO) to various states across the country. So far, IR has delivered nearly 14500 MT of LMO in more than 884 tankers to various States across the country.
Interestingly, 224 Oxygen Expresses have completed their journey so far and each day deliver more than 800 MT of LMO to the country.
According to the Ministry, as of yesterday, eight loaded Oxygen Expresses were on run with more than 563 MT of LMO in 35 tankers.
These express services have so far catered oxygen to 13 States including Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Telangana, Punjab, Kerala, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh.
The trains have offloaded 614 MT of oxygen in Maharashtra, nearly 3463 in Uttar Pradesh, 566 in Madhya Pradesh, 4278 in Delhi, 1698 in Haryana, 98 in Rajasthan, 943 in Karnataka, 320 in Uttarakhand, 769 in Tamil Nadu, 571 in Andhra Pradesh, 153 in Punjab, 246 in Kerala and 772 in Telangana.
Ensuring that the much required oxygen reaches in the fastest time possible, Railways is creating new standards in running of Oxygen Express Freight Trains. The average speed of these trains is way above 55 in most cases over long distances and they run on high priority Green Corridor.
The operational teams of various zones are working 24×7 with technical stoppages having been reduced to 1 minute for crew changes over different sections.
What is remarkable is that all this is done without in any way affecting the operation of other freight operations.
