Chennai: The Integral Coach Factory (ICF), Chennai on Tuesday rolled out its 60,000th coach. In 2018-19, the ICF produced 3,262 coaches, thus making it the world’s largest rail coach-manufacturing unit, said Mr. Rajesh Agrawal, Member (Rolling Stock), Railway Board, on a visit to ICF.
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• It is a proud moment for ICF and for the entire nation, he added.
• He said,” In the current year, we expect the ICF to cross manufacturing nearly 4,000 coaches. The growth is exponential. It is only a matter of time that the ICF breaks its own records.”
• The 60,000th coach was a self-propelled inspection car.
‘Vande Bharat Express’
• ‘Vande Bharat Express‘ also known as ‘Train 18‘, a semi-high speed trainset, was flagged off early this year from the ICF.
View of Vande Bharat Express
• Mr. Agrawal said, with this, the Indian Railways has entered the semi-high-speed era with speeds of 160-200 kmph.
• It has been such a success that despite many Shatabdi trains running from Delhi, Vande Bharat trains have been running full ever since they commenced operation, he claimed.
• Presently the train runs between New Delhi and Varanasi as Vande Bharat Express.
• The self-propelled train has been manufactured by the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) Chennai under ‘Make in India’ initiative at a cost of Rs 97 crore.
• The ICF will roll out 40 Vande Bharat Express trainsets while fitting with the driver cabin crash guard with aluminum design in place of fiber reinforced plastic (FRP) used now.
Manufacturing of India’s first Train 18
‘Train 19’
• Also, the ICF this year will come out with ‘Train 19‘ to replace the Rajdhani Express, Agrawal said.
• ICF will take up the design, development, and production of Train 19 sets similar to Rajadhani Express, a sleeper version of Train 18.
Coach production-
• All three manufacturing units of the Railways — Integral Coach Factory (ICF) Chennai, Rail Coach Factory (RCF) at Kapurthala and Modern Coach Factory (MCF) at Raebareli — will together produce around 7,500 coaches this year.
Manufacturing of coaches
• Around Rs 2,500 crore infrastructure improvement projects are being planned for coach production units of Indian Railways.
• Of the total, an investment of Rs. 500 crore is planned to be spent for ICF.
• ICF plans to roll out 12 rakes of air-conditioned suburban trains.
Rail Coach Factory, Latur-
• Mr. Agrawal said, the Rail Coach Factory at Latur in Maharashtra is now getting ready.
• The Coach Factory is likely to be commissioned this year, he said.
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