Jindal Steel & Power Limited (JSPL) has started supply of 1,080 grade Head Hardened rails to Rail Vikas Nigam Limited for the completion of Kolkata Metro’s Joka-Esplanade corridor. JSPL became the first domestic company to supply specially treated indigenous 1,080 grade Head Hardened rails for completion of new phase of Kolkata Metro corridors. Earlier, Metro Rail corporations and Western Dedicated Freight Corridor used to import Head Hardened rails from Japan and Europe for construction of high-speed tracks. These rails have been specially manufactured at JSPL’s Raigarh plant and trains can run on these tracks at a speed of up to 250 km per hour. JSPL was selected by RVNL after a bidding process to supply 3,000 MT of Head Hardened rails for Kolkata Metro rail tracks. So far, JSPL has supplied 1300 MT of 1080 grade Head Hardened rails to RVNL, while the remaining amount of 1700 MT will be made within a week, an official statement from JSPL said. Research Design and Standard Organization (RDSO) has approved the 1080 grade HH rails of JSPL’s Raigarh Rail mill. The 1080 Head Hardened grade Rails is also approved by the internationally accredited agency TUV-Nord-Luxembourg (Gr 1080HH). V R Sharma, Managing Director, JSPL said: “The technology to produce these head hardened rails is imported from Germany. Soon we will supply grade 1175 HT for heavyweight traffic rail tracks for Indian railways.” JSPL has the technological capability and capacity to meet the entire requirement of domestic projects for Head Hardened and HT rails, he added.
