Completion of Western Dedicated Freight Corridor pushed to March 2026

The Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFCCIL) has extended the deadline for completing the final section of the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (WDFC) by three months, with commissioning now expected by March 2026, according to a senior DFCCIL official.

The delayed segment is the 102-km stretch between Vaitarna and Jawaharlal Nehru Port (JNPT), a critical last-mile link to India’s busiest container gateway. The section was originally slated for completion by March last year, later revised to December, and has now been further deferred.

While track-laying work on the stretch has been completed and earlier challenges related to land acquisition and encroachments have been resolved, commissioning has been held up due to pending signaling and overhead electrification (OHE) works. The official said these remaining activities are expected to take another two to three months to finish before the section can be fully operational.

India’s Dedicated Freight Corridor project comprises two arms—the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (EDFC) and the WDFC. The EDFC was fully commissioned in 2024. Together, the two corridors handled an average of 406 freight trains per day in December. Once the final WDFC section is commissioned, daily train movements are expected to increase to around 440.

Separately, DFCCIL has received 45 new rakes from Indian Railways to support the rollout of its trucks-on-trains (ToT) service. The service enables loaded trucks to be transported on specially designed flat wagons along the DFC network, offering a faster and more sustainable alternative to long-haul road transport.

In another operational milestone, the DFC network recently handled 892 interchange trains in a single day across five Indian Railways zones—the highest such interchange recorded since the corridors were commissioned.