The Dedicated freight corridors in India are a network of broad gauge freight railway lines that solely serve freight trains, thus making the freight service in India faster and more efficient. The Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India is responsible for undertaking planning, development, and mobilisation of financial resources and construction, maintenance and operation of these corridors.

Proposals 

As the need for a dedicated freight corridor arose, in December 2006, an agreement was signed between India and Japan for the Development of two exclusive rail freight corridors, also known as Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFC) as a part of economic co-operation for industry and trade. One between Delhi and Mumbai, termed as Western Corridor and other between Delhi and Kolkata termed as Eastern Corridor. A band of 150 km each on either side of this corridor was planned to be developed exclusively for industrial development.

Construction 

Under the Eleventh Five Year Plan of India (2007–12), the Ministry of Railways started constructing a new Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) in two long routes, namely the Eastern and Western freight corridors. The two routes cover a total length of , with the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor stretching from Ludhiana in Punjab to Dankuni in West Bengal and the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor from Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Mumbai (Maharashtra) to Dadri in Uttar Pradesh. Upgrading of transportation technology, increase in productivity and reduction in unit transportation cost are the focus areas for the project.

Technology

Pantographs 

In 2007, India set a world record with the indigenously designed pantograph, developed for the use in dedicated freight corridors and other freight routes. with many other added features, such as twin catenary height of 6 & 7.5 meters, auto upward-force adjustment to improve effective current collection in adverse conditions, thereby enabling reduction in energy consumption and allowing trains to run at much higher speeds.

Locomotives 

WAG-12 locomotive is a class of Indian electric locomotive that was developed in 2017 by Alstom. With a horsepower of 12,000 hp it is one of the most powerful locomotives in the world. These locomotives are being used on the existing dedicated freight corridors.

Network

Summary

Golden Quadrilateral Freight Corridor (GQFC) 

GQFC has 6 DFCs, 2 are being implemented and the funding for the remaining 4 was approved in January 2018. The rail tracks linking the four largest metropolitan cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata, and the two diagonals of 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  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% and 150%. 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.

Impact
The dedicated freight corridors aim to bring down the cost of freight transport, by using electrical fuel, longer trains with more capacity the western DFC utilises double stacking to transport more containers), thus helping Indian industries to become competitive in the world export market. These corridors will also help India achieve the targets it has committed to in the Paris Climate Accords, by switching from diesel propelled freight trains and fossil fuel-based road traffic to the electricity based railway locomotives. India is growing in renewable energy production, with most of the country's new electricity generation capacity being added through solar, wind and nuclear sources.

The new generation pantograph allows an increase in the height of the overhead wires (catenary height) from the standard  to  -setting the world record for the high reach pantograph for highest catenary for electric locomotives, this will also enable Indian railways to introduce double-decker passenger trains in high-density suburban passenger route and RORO cargo service across the Indian railways network. The Indian passenger railway network will be able to run semi-high speed and high-speed trains in the existing network, as 70% of cargo traffic will migrate to the dedicated freight corridors. Also, increase the distance between track centers to , allowing larger out-of-gauge trains. Only low platforms will be permissible.

The Eastern DFC may not be able to support RORO as it has height of  compared to  of the Western DFC. While the Konkan railway is the only railway zone in India, which has streamlined the RORO service and is able to save 75 million litre diesel fuel and related foreign exchange for the country. RORO services are deployed in East central railway, Northeast Frontier railway zones along with Konkan railway, but, RORO has  failed to be successful in existing electrical railway infrastructure because of the height of the overhead electrical wires.

See also
Freight transport
Transport in India
Rail transport in India
High-speed rail in India
Urban rail transit in India
RapidX
List of high-speed railway lines in India
Multi-Modal Logistics Parks in India
Aerial lift in India
Bus rapid transit in India
Future of rail transport in India

References

External links
 Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFCCIL) Official Website
 Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFCCIL) Official link for project status
 DFCC will use New Track Construction machine having capacity of 1.5 KM of track per day
 March 2014 news article stating near total land acquisition and environmental clearances

Use dmy dates from February 2022
Dedicated freight corridors of India
Railway companies of India
Proposed infrastructure in India