First train load of water to Chennai city in 18 years
Posted on: 13/Jul/2019 10:10:06 AM
The sensational piece of news is on Friday, 12th July 2019, Chennai city received its first water train in 18 years from Vellore district. This has been spoken in high esteem now. Information is nearly 2.5 million litres of water was transported by train to Chennai city. Local administrative minister, Mr. Velumani received the much awaited water special of 50 wagons near the Villivakkam railway station.
The distance between Jolarpet and Villivakkam railway station is more than 200 km and it is now brought out that the train covered this distance in just 4 hours of time. It must be noted that the chief minister of TN, Mr. E. Palaniswamy has written a letter to the prime minister of India, Mr. Modi requesting allotment of another special train for transporting water to Chennai city.
The information collected is 10 mld of water is to be brought from Jolarpet in 2 trains to tide over the water crisis in Chennai city. Other important personalities who made their presence felt yesterday are ministers Mr. D. Jayakumar, Mr. Ma Foi Pandiarajan, Mr. Benjamin plus others like Mr. Mahesh, Chennai divisional railway manager, Chennai metro water officials etc. They also received the train from Jolarpet.
At the Kota workshop in west central railway, 2 rakes of the tankers were readied and this was confirmed by a senior official belonging to southern railway. It is possible to carry 50,000 litres of water by means of each wagon. It is important to mention here that 2 dedicated locomotives would pull the 50 wagon train and these locomotives would be present at the front and at the rear end. By this, travel as well as turnaround time would be reduced. At Jolarpet, Mr. C.N. Mahesvaran, managing director of TWAD, flagged off the water train.
Monitoring the water movement from the pumping station at Mettusakkarakuppam through pipelines regularly to avoid any spillage is important. Point is the managing director TWAD advised the officials to do the above mentioned work. The surplus water supplied from Mettur at various places in the Vellore district under the Vellore Combined Water Supply Scheme was being diverted to Chennai city. This was later mentioned by the managing director. There are also other places that get benefit by this scheme and these are Ambur, Salem, Gudiyatham and Arakkonam.
In one week, the required infrastructure was built at a cost of Rs 5 crores near Jolarpet railway station to fill the wagons. It is known that a conduit line originally brought water from Red Hills. Information is through this conduit line water decanted from the train near South Jagannathan Nagar in Villivakkam would pass through. Point is water would be carried to Kilpauk water works by the pipeline and from there it would be distributed to places like Triplicane, Ayanavaram and Perambur.
