Chennai: The first ‘Oxygen Express’ train to Tamilnadu carrying four containers of 80 metric tonnes medical oxygen arrived on Friday.
Southern Railway sources said the Oxygen express, which departed from Durgapur in West Bengal on the night of 12 May, arrived at the Tondiarpet container depot Friday.
The Oxygen Express carried cryogenic tankers mounted on flat-type wagons.
The cryogenic tankers mounted on trucks and filled with LMO are transported by rail using the Roll on and Roll off (RO-RO) method.
This RO-RO service will facilitate door-to-door delivery of oxygen at hospitals as per directives of the State government without having to unload from the railway wagon.
Southern Railway said it has started running Oxygen Express trains with empty tankers from Tiruvallur near Chennai to Rourkela in Odisha.
The first rake with two empty cryogenic tankers dispatched on 12 May has reached Rourkela yesterday evening. Filling of oxygen has started.
The second rake carrying three empty cryogenic tankers has been readied at Tiruvallur and left for Rourkela late Thursday night. This oxygen express comprises of 7 MBWT, 2 BOM type wagons and one SLRD for the accompanying staff.
These empty tankers filled with Oxygen will be dispatched back to Tamilnadu.
The Indian Railways has started this initiative of running Oxygen Express on a mission mode to meet the requirement of LMO for the treatment of COVID-19 patients in different parts of the country.
The railways has already delivered nearly 5,735 metric tonnes of LMO in more than 375 tankers to Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Telangana.