Woman railway loco pilot takes on the ghat to keep supply chain alive

Anupama Patil

Leaving her five-year-old back home, Anupama Patil sneaked out of her Byculla home before sunrise on Monday, May 4 to reach CSMT to prepare the locomotive of a parcel special train till Howrah scheduled at 6 am.

Patil, an Assistant Loco Pilot with Indian Railways (IR) with 13 years of experience, knew that if she had to take the 6 am train out on time, the preparations needed to start early.

"The train was ferrying a large number of essentials and any delay on my part would have delayed the entire chain of process. I started around 4:45 am from home and reached Mumbai CSMT on time. The train started on time and we could fly it at 75 kmph till Kalyan," she said.

"After that began the challenging task of the arduous ghat journey till Igatpuri where the steep inclines and declines of mountain prove to be a challenging task," she adds. The train reached Igatpuri by 8:35 am.

Patil, who has worked for three years on mail express trains, earlier was a driver of a banker engine at Lonavala which pushes trains uphill. The parcel express further reached the destination on time, keeping the supply chain alive.

Shivaji Sutar, Central Railway (CR) chief spokesperson said, "CR has so far planned 325 parcel trains for carrying medicines, perishables, etc. out of which 68 are yet to run and 257 have already run carrying about 3,500 tonnes - including 498 tonnes of medicines and 1,400 tonnes perishable items."

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