Chennai: The country's premier Integral Coach Factory has become the largest coach manufacturer in the world, said Rajesh Agrawal, Member (Rolling Stock) Railway Board.
Speaking to mediapersons in ICF, Avadi on Tuesday, he said that it is a matter of pride that ICF has rolled out 3,262 coaches last year, which makes it as the largest coach manufacturer in the world. He hoped that, ICF would break its own record by producing more than 4,000 coaches next year.
The ICF is also manufacturing coaches for Sri Lanka Railways. Agrawal inspected the coaches that were produced at ICF for export to Sri Lanka Railways.
The ICF crossed a milestone on Tuesday by rolling out 60,000th coach. The coach was flagged off from ICF in the presence of Rajesh Agrawal, Member (Rolling Stock) Railway Board. K. Venkateswaralu, senior most retiring employee of ICF has flagged off the coach for Southern Railway.
ICF being a pioneer of railway coach production has churned out a large number of coaches in various designs including self propelled passenger coaches, luxury coaches and semi high speed train sets such as Vande Bharat Express.
Rajesh Agrawal lauded the efforts of ICF in manufacturing coaches for prestigious Vande Bharat Express, which is running to its full capacity between New Delhi and Varanasi, since its inception. He said in the current year, ICF will take up the design, development and production of Train 19, a sleeper version of Train 18 in the lines of Rajadhani Express. He said ICF is also going on full steam to manufacture more number of Vande Bharat Express train sets and 40 such train sets will be rolled out from ICF in the immediate future. In order to enhance the safety of Train 18, in the event of cattle crossing, it has been planned to fit the driver cabin crash guard with aluminum design in place of FRP.
