The Ministry of Railways has recently placed an order of 44 more rakes of the indigenously produced Train-18 rake, according to Integral Coach Factory (ICF) officials.
The first rake is currently serving as the Vande Bharat Express between New Delhi and Varanasi. The second rake is currently under production at ICF. The remaining Train-18 rakes are planned to be manufactured at ICF, IR’s largest coach production facility, in phases over the next three years.
While ICF is the only facility producing Train-18 coaches for IR at present, Modern Coach Factory (MCF) at Rae Bareli is likely to start production of Train-18 rakes over the next few years.
ICF production number are seeing a consistent rise year on year, specifically in the new technology coaches. This year has been no different – till February 2019, ICF has rolled out 2,919 coaches. This is a significant rise from 2,085 and 1,976 coaches in 2018 and 2017 respectively.
Of these numbers up to February 2019, ICF has rolled out 949 self-propelled coaches like EMUs, DEMUs, and MEMUs – for the suburban ridership, and the much-talked-about T18. This also includes the first-ever MEMU for Northern Railway with underslung and air-conditioned EMU with underslung electrics for Mumbai Suburban Railways. The earlier record production of coaches was 852 coaches, in the year 2016-17.
Integral Coach Factory, a premier coach production unit of Indian Railways has, since 1955, turned out 59,453 coaches in various designs and technologies. Some of those are self-propelled coaches such as EMU/DEMU/MEMU, luxury tourist coaches such as Palace on wheels/Deccan Odyssey/Vistadome, conventional Air Conditioned / Non-Air-Conditioned passenger coaches, coaches for the special trains such as Kolkata Metro and Train 18, India’s first semi high speed train set.
