Indian Railways is hosting the 10th International Heavy Haul Association (IHHA) Conference in New Delhi from February 4-6.
The three-day technical program will address recent research and best practices related to key issues involved in running heavy haul and long haul freight trains and the central theme of the conference is “Building Transport Capacity through Heavy Haul Operation”.
Over 120 oral papers from 16 countries will be presented their paper in four parallel technical sessions for three days and close to 300 foreign and 500 Indian delegates is expected to attend the event.
The conference follows a three-day track and rail wheel interaction workshop where 19 leading experts in the field of Heavy Haul taught best practices for Heavy Haul Operations-Infrastructure Construction and maintenance issues.
Heavy haul rail operation has evolved over the years as a technology to transport bulk commodities in large volumes and reduce the unit cost of transportation.
Heavy haul envisages increased axle load of 24 tonnes and above. Train lengths have also increase up to 4 km. The trailing train loads vary from 10,000 tonnes to 50,000 tonnes.
“Railways have launched a huge programme of building Heavy Haul Lines having potential axle load of 32.5 tonnes under the programme name Dedicated Freight Corridors and few lines connecting ports are being built or operated at 25 tonne axle load and are transporting iron ore,” Indian Railways said in a statement.
IHHA is a worldwide non-government association dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in heavy haul operation, engineering, maintenance and technology.
India, USA, Canada, Brazil, Russia, China, Sweden, South Africa, and Australia are the members of International Heavy Haul Association.
The conference is organised once in every four years. The last conference was held in Shanghai China in 2009.
