Chennai: Integral Coach Factory (ICF), Chennai, is awaiting orders from Sri Lanka to produce rail coaches through RITES consultancy and similarly ICF is ready to provide world class coaches to Chennai Metro Rail Ltd at a reasonable price, if orders are placed, ICF general manager Ashok Agarwal said here on Wednesday.
Discussing about Chennai floods and how the floods affected rail coach manufacturing at ICF Shell unit, Agarwal said production was affected for more than two months. But the employees of ICF strived hard to get to the all-time high manufacturing record of producing 2,005 coaches.
If employees are taken care and given their due benefits, production automatically goes up, he said. For the current fiscal, ICF has planned to meet the target of producing 2,500 coaches. Talking about passenger friendly initiatives, Agarwal said more facilities to help working professional traveling in trains are on the cards and the number of electric sockets to charge laptops, palmtops and mobile phones will be increased in all railway coaches manufactured in Chennai and CCTV cameras with infrared sensors will also be installed in LHB coaches.
“Expect better facilities and sanitation in our railway coaches and the designs are periodically improvised and the provision of steps inside the AC coaches has received good response from rail passengers,” he said.
On interior designs, he said ICF will manufacture close to a dozen Anubhuti coaches where the interiors will compete with the ones provide in aircraft. ICF is also working on thematic coaches where transient coaches with transparent glasses will be produced to cater for the tourism sector.
