Bhubaneswar, April 1: East Coast Railway (ECoR) has once again reaffirmed its position as the premier freight handling zone of Indian Railways, achieving an all time high freight loading of 286.3 Million Tonnes (MT) during the financial year 2025–26.

This marks a significant increase of 27 MT over the previous year’s loading of 259.25 MT, underscoring the zone’s consistent growth and operational excellence.

In tandem with the rise in freight loading, the zone also recorded a substantial increase in freight earnings. During 2025–26, East Coast Railway earned ₹29,456.60 crore from freight operations, compared to ₹26,691.82 crore in 2024–25, registering a robust growth of over 10%. This strong financial performance further reinforces its leadership in freight operations across Indian Railways.

With this achievement, East Coast Railway continues to lead all railway zones in freight performance, contributing 17.1% of the total 1669.9 MT freight loading achieved by Indian Railways during the year. Notably, this is the seventh consecutive year that East Coast Railway has crossed the 200 MT mark, reflecting its sustained leadership in freight operations.

The zone plays a critical role in transporting key bulk commodities such as coal, iron ore, steel, cement, alumina, fertilizers and food grains, which are essential to core sectors like power generation, infrastructure and heavy industries.

In addition to its freight accomplishments, East Coast Railway has also recorded encouraging growth in passenger business during the year. During 2025–26, the zone carried 97.64 million passengers, generating earnings of ₹2,495.51 crore, as compared to 93.52 million passengers and ₹2,371.09 crore in 2024–25. This represents a steady rise in both passenger volume and revenue.