LAHORE: After about three years, Pakistan Railways got a boost as five freight trains left Karachi for upcountry destinations on Tuesday.

Freight service is the major source of income for railways worldwide and the Pakistan Railways used to earn at least Rs6 billion annually from the operation of eight to ten freight trains from Karachi for various upcountry destinations daily.

However, an acute shortage of locomotives had in May 2011 forced the railways administration to suspend all cargo trains from Karachi. Suspension of passenger trains and availability of locomotives resulted in restoration of freight service of four trains daily in December the same year. However, the freight service witnessed several ups and downs primarily due to locomotives shortage and the number of freight trains leaving Karachi remained one or two daily.

Addition of 15 rehabilitated locomotives to the PR fleet in September this year helped improve punctuality of passenger trains and ensured operation of two freight trains daily from the Sindh capital.

A local private company has been upgrading Pakistan Railway Workshops for overhauling 27 locomotives within two years. The first batch of five rehabilitated locomotives would be available in June 2014, followed by induction of two locomotives every month that would be used for freight operations.

Five new locomotives would be added to the railways fleet next month that would be the first batch of the 58 locomotives the PR would get from a Chinese company.

Of a fleet of 520 locomotives, some 170 or so remain operational on an average now – more than 100 are being used to run passenger trains while 50 or so are involved in shunting duties, etc.

Availability of locomotives has improved the punctuality of passenger trains to 65 percent while it was 20 per cent in December last year.