Indian Railways has achieved a landmark feat with one of its production units —Integral Coach Factory (ICF) —manufacturing a record number of train coaches in one financial year, which is also a world record. The Chennai-based ICF has registered a record-high production of coaches by building 2,503 in 2017-18, thus surpassing last its year’s figure of 2277 coaches.
The manufactured coaches consists of electric multiple units (EMUs) for Mumbai and Chennai, diesel-electric multiple units (DEMU) for Jammu and Kashmir, Kolkata Metro, Self Propelled Accident Relief Train (SPART), diesel-electric tower cars (DETC), tourist coaches for IRCTC, and Military langer. However the biggest achievement of the ICF is to roll out 1115 lHB coaches against the 400 produced last fiscal.
While the production target fixed by the Railway Board was 2,464, the ICF successfully surpassed this number with 2503 coaches. The 2500th coach was flagged off on March 31 by two senior employees, CC Bakthavachalam and V Rajagopal, in the presence of General Manager S Mani and other senior officers and staff members of the ICF. Ever since he took over, Mani has giving opportunities to ICF staffers for activities involving inaugurations, commissioning etc and seldom does he use the services of top officials in solemnizing customary events.
“The ICF now looks forward to the production of 3,000 trains or more in 2018-19, with a number of new product variations in the pipeline for the coming year. The state of the art Train Sets will be rolled out from this production unit by June end. looking at our potential and skills, the Railway Ministry has assigned us many other tasks related to coach productions. By 2020, ICF has planned on introducing Train 20 aluminum body train set,” said Mani, when sought for his comments on this new feat.
Not very long ago ICF developed a fuel cell based train prototype. The fuel cell powered train will have Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell, coupled with lithium ion batteries and super capacitors. This variance is expected to be ready by December 2018 and the first fuel cell driven passenger train is expected to be operated for the public by December 2019.
Railway Board officials said that ICF is also looking forward to supply 80 world-class coaches to Sri lanka. The Railway Ministry last month had also exported 18 locomotives to Myanmar and several other projects are on the anvil where the Centre has gone into MoUs with other countries.