The second and third Oxygen Express trains, carrying 120 MT liquid medical oxygen (LMO) each, from Odisha and Jharkhand respectively, reached Whitefield railway station in Bengaluru’s eastern suburb on Saturday, an official has said. With these two Oxygen Express trains reaching Bengaluru, Karnataka has so far received 360 tonnes of the life-saving gas in three separate consignments.
The second Oxygen Express train with six cryogenic containers reached Bengaluru on Saturday morning from Kalinganagar in Odisha’s Jajpur district.
The third train reached the state from Tatanagar in Jharkhand on Saturday evening, the South Western Railway (SWR) said.
The Railways had created signal-free green corridors for the non-stop movement of the trains. While one train covered 1,833 km in nearly 30 hours from Tatanagar to Bengaluru, the other travelled 1,715 km in nearly 26.5 hours from Kalinganagar to the tech city, an SWR official said.
“With 20 tonnes of liquid medical oxygen in each container, 240 tonnes of the gas were transported from Jharkhand and Odisha to Karnataka,” said the official.
“A ramp was already built at the satellite goods terminal for unloading the oxygen containers safely,” the official added.
The Railways is operating Oxygen Express trains across the country since the previous 20 days to ensure the speedy delivery of medical oxygen to meet its growing demand to treat patients suffering from Covid-19, amid the raging second wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Railways has so far transported more than 8,700 tonnes of oxygen across the entire country.
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