South Coast Railway zone


The South Coast Railway Zone is a new Indian railway zone, headquartered at Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.

Jurisdiction

South Coast Railway will be headquartered at Visakhapatnam and have three divisions. The existing Waltair division will be bifurcated into two parts. The Andhra Pradesh part of the division, that includes Visakhapatnam district, Vizianagaram district, and a part of Srikakulam district will be merged into neighbouring Vijayawada division. The other part of Srikakulam district will be merged into Khurda division of East Coast Railway. South Coast Railway spreads over the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Telangana. It also covers a minor portion of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

Route Length

The 1,106 route km of the present Waltair division is proposed to be distributed between East Coast Railway – Rayagada division, Khurda division and Vijayawada division. With the proposed jurisdictions, SCoR will have division-wise route km and Running track km as: Vijayawada 1,414 and 2,631 respectively, Guntakal 1,452 and 2,145 and Guntur 630 and 661 respectively.

Jurisdiction of SCoR after Waltair Division is merged with Vijayawada Division

This is an important mineral route with ruling gradient of 1 in 60 with some block sections prone for stalling of loaded freight trains. Hence it is preferable to fix inter zonal boundary in such a way that either sides of interchange point at a station which has operational feasibility and flexibility in the form of more running lines to regulate trains and also availability of field officers and supervisors for troubleshooting. Keeping these factors in view these boundaries were fixed from 106 km from Kottavalasa to including Araku station.
The zone covers the states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and parts of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. It has three divisions:
The zone operates more than 500 trains during peak season to clear the rush of passengers. For the financial year 2020-2021, the zone is expected to collect per annum as per the DPR of SCoR.

Infrastructure

Wi-Fi Stations

Many railway stations in South Coast Railway Zone are Wi-Fi enabled, provided by Railwire in association with Google which are as follows.
The zone has passenger coach care depots at Visakhapatnam, Kakinada, Narsapur, Machilipatnam, Vijayawada in VIJAYAWADA Division. Nallapadu, Guntur in GUNTUR Division. Tirupati and Guntakal in GUNTAKAL Division. Additionally Vijayawada and Gooty have wagon maintenance depots.

Training Institutes

The zone has training institutes for imparting and learning railway techniques serving both Indian as well as foreign railway staffs at Vijayawada and Guntakal.

Healthcare

Railway Hospitals which are located in these areas, Div. Hospital at Vishakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Guntakal and Rayanapadu, Guntur have healthcare facilities serving exclusively for the employees of Indian railways and their families.