Two full 50-wagon rakes, carrying 25 lakh litres each, reach the parched town on Maha Day
The railways and the district administration overseeing the Miraj to Latur water-by-train plan jointly managed to unload two full 50-wagon rakes carrying 5 million litre of water on May 1 which also happened to be Maharashtra Day. This is the highest delivery of water since the trips began on April 11. While the first rake carrying 25 lakh litres of water arrived at Latur at around 6am, the second rake reached 5pm on Sunday.
According to Solapur railway officials, there have been a total of 23 trips between the two stations so far. The first nine trips were 10-wagon ones carrying 5 lakh litres of water, remaining trips since then have been full 50-wagon trips carrying 25 lakh litres, said officials.
The first full 50-wagon trip was on April 19. The trips have so far transported 39.5 million litres of water to Latur, which incidentally is only about one day's water supply that Latur ideally requires. Each wagon carries 50,000 litres of water.
As first reported by dna in its April 27 edition, two more 50-wagon water rakes are being steam-cleaned and readied at the Wagon Repair Workshop at Kota in Rajasthan and Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh for deployment in Maharashtra.
Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis had told dna that the two new water wagon rakes would be deployed on a shorter route towards Latur so that the project of transporting water to the parched town can be expedited and streamlined.
Fadnavis told this newspaper that the state would provide water to Latur and adjoining areas from Dudhna river. The rakes would be deployed via Partur which will reduce the rake's journey considerably. While Miraj is at 375km from Latur, Dudhana via Partur is at 290km from Latur.
"It will give us better turn-around time (the empty run of the rake from Latur to Miraj) and also allow for better maintenance of all the four rakes. It will help scale up the plan considerably," said a railway official.
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