"We hope to get Rs 10-15 crore over and above the Rs 35-crore target set for this year if the deals are clinched," claimed a railway official. Automobile movement through railways showed a marked increase during May and June. While in April, it carried 22 rakes of automobiles, during May and June, it carried 35 to 37 rakes. This was more than double of the last year's monthly average of 10-15 rakes.

Car loading increased from Telco's Pune, Maruti's Gurgaon and Hyundai's Chennai units. Tractor loading also increased especially from TAFE's units at Dodlallapur near Bangalore, Tindigul near Madurai and Chennai and HMTChandigarh.

There was also increased loading of Mahindra gypsy from its Nashik plant and from Kandivali station for its plant in Jogeshwari near Mumbai. The improved automobile business was in the zonal areas of western, southern and northern railways.

According to the official source, the improvement was mainly due to new plants having come up and also due to increase in the automobile demand during the three months.

The railways are meeting the increased demand by converting old passenger coaches into automobile wagons. About 300 such wagons have been pressed into service. According to sources, this will be a temporary arrangement though these wagons are capable of functioning for another four to five years.The Lucknow-based Research, Designs and Standards Organisation (RDSO) has designed a prototype of automobile wagon for double decking. It is awaiting technical clearance.

The new wagon will cost Rs 20-25 lakh. The railway will be floating a tender for manufacturing these wagons shortly.

Theofficial admitted that the new wagons will be ready not before one year. At present, the railways are in short supply of about 150 wagons and by the time the new wagons are inducted the demand may go down.

The railways expect to generate a total revenue of Rs 35 crore from transporting automobiles this year. It has already managed about Rs 7 crore during the first three months. Last year, the revenue from automobiles was only Rs 15 crore.

The official claimed that the reason for automobile companies showing interest in transporting through railways was that in long sectors, it is cheaper to transport by rail than roads since the transit time is less though the cost incurred is same.

The railways is in midst of a marketing exercise aimed at boosting its sagging freight revenue. Last week, it widened the scope of its volume discount scheme by adding five more commodities. It also introduced differential rebate slab in place of flat 10 per cent rebate.

The railways have also tried to increase business innon-bulk commodities by targetting companies like Hindustan Levers and Nestle.

The railway freight traffic has started moving upwards with a 7.77 per cent increase during the first two months of 1999-2000 over the same period last year after a negative 1.97 per cent growth in 1998-99. The railways carried 71.45 million tonne (mt) of revenue earning freight during April and May which was 5.15 mt more than the same period of the last year. The increase was mainly attributed to the economy showing signs of recovery and not merely to the railways' marketing efforts.

There was a 11.03 per cent rise in earnings during the two months compared to only 1.77 per cent rise in the entire 1998-99. However, this increase could also be due to the flat 4 per cent increase in the freight rates in this year's budget compared to no increase in the same last year.