C
Commercialpedia Indian Railways commercial circulars and policies

1. The Railways Act, 1989 (No.24 of 1989) defines railway as under

Currency not verifiedStudy materialfreight
Currency not verified. Nobody has confirmed whether this circular is still in force. Check the present position before relying on it. The official Railway Board PDF always prevails over anything shown here.

No official Railway Board PDF has been traced for this entry yet. The text below was read from the document held in the library.

TypeCommercial Circular
Topicfreight
CurrencyCurrency not verified

Summary

Capital Cost of new siding : The siding owner shall bear the capital cost of the siding from

Text of the circular

245
Section - 6
1. The Railways Act, 1989 (No.24 of 1989) defines railway as under:-
“Railway” means a railway or any portion of a railway for the public carriage of passengers
for goods and includes –
(a)
_______________________________________________________
(b)
all lines of rails, sidings or yards or branches used for purpose of or in connection with
railway.
(c)
_______________________________________________________
(d)
_______________________________________________________etc.
The Railways act, 1989, thus includes a siding within the definition of the term “Railway”.
An assisted/private siding is a siding constructed to serve a Government Department, a factory.
Mill or other industrial premises other than the colliery or mining area under a special arrangement.
This is the definition given in para 2501 of Indian Railway Commercial Manual.  A siding may
be used not only for reception, dispatch, stabling, loading, unloading etc. of the wagons but also
as a running line, though distinct from main line when the industry/installation being served by a
siding is situated away from the main line and the railway track has to be taken from the main
line right upto the installation.
Advantages of a Siding
2.
A siding enables an industry, a mine a colliery, a power house etc. to have railways brought
to a point within its premises. If both the dispatching and receiving points are connected by
siding, a uni-modal door to door service becomes available, e.g. in the case of a coal wagon
loaded from a colliery siding and unloaded in a siding provided in a power house or industry.
Such a door to door service not only results in avoidance of repeated handling involved in multi-
modal transport and consequent cost but also results in avoidance of breakage, theft, pilferage,
etc. involved in repeated loading, unloading operations when goods are brought to the dispatching
point by road and again taken to the receiving point by road from the nearest rail head.  In fact,
for any major industry having considerable volume of traffic, provision of siding facilities is
essential not only from economic view point but also from the practical view points as large scale
handling of traffic by road or road cum rails is not a feasible proposition.
3.
A siding holder also enjoys certain incidental benefits. For example, if a siding handles
two rakes per day and the railway locomotive visits the siding according to a fixed schedule
twice a day under the pilot to pilot system of working the siding holder gets almost 12 hours’ free
time for loading and unloading of wagons as against the normal free time of 5 hours for 4
wheeled wagons and slightly higher free time for 8 wheeled wagons. A siding holder can also
Part IV-Sidings

246
Section - 6
avoid handling of cash for payment of railway freight by getting from the railway facility of
making payment of railway dues by credit note cum  cheque or under weight only system details
of which can be obtained from the Railways.  Even for demurrage, billing is done by the Railways
on a periodical or monthly basis thus providing  certain credit to the siding holder for its payment.
4.
In the case of large undertaking such as mines, power houses etc. mechanical aids for
loading/unloading can be integrated with the layout of the siding, e.g., coal handling plants for
loading coal into wagons at colliery sidings and wagon tipplers for unloading bulk commodities
like coal by power house.
Assisted/Private siding
5.
Sidings provided by the Railways are of two types, Assisted and Private.  In the case of
private sidings, the entire cost of private siding is borne by the siding owner.  In the case of
assisted siding, however, a part of the cost of the siding is borne by the Railway Administration.
Broadly, the principles governing the sharing of cost of assisted siding between the Railways and
the siding owner as prescribed in para 1826 of the Indian Railways Code for Engineering
department is that the entire cost of sidi

Extract shown above; the full text is available in the search app.

Related circulars

Search the whole library

Open this circular in the search app · Search all 4,025 documents