East Coast Railway Zone
East Coast Railway written in Devanagari
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| Locale | Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh |
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| Dates of operation | April 1, 2003– |
| Headquarters | Bhubaneswar |
| Website | ECoR official website |
The East Coast Railway (ECoR) is one of the seventeen railway zones of Indian Railways. It came into existence on 1 April 2003. As the name suggests, most of the railway routes of the zone are near the east coast of India.
Consequent upon the parliament’s approval, East Coast Railway was the first of the seven new zones to be inaugurated by the then Prime Minister of India H. D. Deve Gowda on 8 August 1996. The Officer-on-Special Duty took over charge of the newly declared Zone on 16 September 1996. Initially, only one division namely Khurda Road was attached to this railway.
Subsequently, the zone became fully operational with effect from 1 April 2003.
The geographical jurisdiction of East Coast Railway zone extends over three states encompassing almost all of Odisha along with parts of Srikakulam, Vizianagaram and Visakhapatnam districts of northeastern Andhra Pradesh and Bastar and Dantewada districts of Chhattisgarh state. The zonal headquarters is at Bhubaneswar in Odisha.
The zone has three divisions: Sambalpur, Khurda Road and Waltair.
The East Coast Railway line integrated with the commissioned Howrah-Chennai electrified trunk route on 29 November 2005. There was a missing link between Kharagpur and Visakhapatnam stations and all trains from Howrah towards Chennai side had to undergo a locomotive change from electric to diesel at Kharagpur and vice versa at Visakhapatnam in order to pass through Odisha. Even trains from New Delhi such as the Bhubaneswar Rajdhani had to undergo the change at Kharagpur. This frequent loco change on a trunk route became a time consuming & inconvenient process. With electrification along the 765 km Kharagpur-Visakhapatnam stretch, trains got speeded up and the need for double headed diesels for high speed express trains was eliminated thus saving on diesel consumption and a cleaner travel. Additionally the line branching off Khurda road towards Puri was also electrified. Gradually the Cuttack-Angul line, Cuttack-Paradeep line and branch line from Jakhapura towards Barbil got electrified too.
The major railway stations in the entire zone are Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Puri, Khurda Road, Bhadrak, Jajpur Keonjhar Road, Brahmapur, Angul, Sambalpur, Balangir, Titlagarh, Bargarh Road, Kantabanji, Rayagada, Palasa, Visakhapatnam and Vizianagaram.
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