334 Oxygen Expresses complete journey; Assam receives fourth Oxygen Express

As many as 334 Oxygen Express trains have delivered more than 22916 metric tonnes (MT) of liquid medical oxygen (LMO) in over 1357 tankers to various states across the country, the Ministry of Railways informed on Tuesday.

The ministry in a statement said, "Assam received its fourth Oxygen Express with 80 MT of LMO in 4 tankers".

The southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Telangana have also received more than 2000 MT of LMO each from Oxygen Expresses.

Another 6 loaded Oxygen Expresses with more than 500 MT of LMO in 32 tankers are also on run as of Tuesday.

The Oxygen Expresses had started their deliveries 38 days back on April 24 in Maharashtra with a load of 126 MT.

Oxygen relief by Oxygen Expresses has been delivered to 15 states namely Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Telangana, Punjab, Kerala, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Assam.

The Railways Ministry informed that so far 614 MT of Oxygen has been offloaded in Maharashtra, nearly 3797 MT in Uttar Pradesh, 656 MT in Madhya Pradesh, 5557 MT in Delhi, 2089 MT in Haryana, 98 MT in Rajasthan, 2440 MT in Karnataka, 320 MT in Uttarakhand, 2190 MT in Tamil Nadu, 2125 MT in Andhra Pradesh, 225 MT in Punjab, 380 MT in Kerala, 2062 MT in Telangana, 38 MT in Jharkhand and 320 MT in Assam.

Till now Oxygen Expresses have delivered to around 39 cities/towns in 15 states across the country namely Lucknow, Varanasi, Kanpur, Bareilly, Gorakhpur and Agra in Uttar Pradesh, Sagar, Jabalpur, Katni and Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, Nagpur, Nashik, Pune, Mumbai and Solapur in Maharashtra, Hyderabad in Telangana, Faridabad and Gurugram in Haryana, Tuglakabad, Delhi Cantt and Okhla in Delhi, Kota and Kanakpara in Rajasthan, Bengaluru in Karnataka, Dehradun in Uttarakhand, Nellore, Guntur, Tadipatri and Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, Ernakulam in Kerala, Tiruvallur, Chennai, Tuticorin, Coimbatore and Madurai in Tamil Nadu, Bhatinda and Phillaur in Punjab, Kamrup in Assam and Ranchi in Jharkhand.

Crisscrossing the country, Railways is picking up oxygen from places like Hapa, Baroda, Mundra in the West and Rourkela, Durgapur, Tatanagar, Angul in the East and then delivering it to States of Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Telangana, Punjab, Kerala, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Assam in complex operational route planning scenarios.

In order to ensure that Oxygen relief reaches in the fastest time possible, Railways is creating new standards and unprecedented benchmarks in running of Oxygen Express Freight Trains. The average speed of these critical Freight trains is way above 55 in most cases over long distances.

( With inputs from ANI )