‘Railways making 2500 general coaches, nod granted for 10k more’
NEW DELHI: Railways minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Friday said that the Indian Railways is manufacturing 2,500 general category passenger coaches, and approval has been received for another 10,000 such wagons to be made in a measure he said was part of the government’s focus on making train travel affordable.
Vaishnaw targeted the opposition and said the Railways has always focused on lower income, lower middle income and the middle-income segments and there has been no change. “Some people were trying to set a political narrative… And so we are going to produce 2,500 general coaches… Production of 10,000 general coaches has been approved.”
Amrit Bharat trains are completely non-AC and are successful trains, he said, as he informed reporters that the “production of 50 of these trains have started and around 180 are in the pipeline.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had in December last year, flagged two Amrti Bharat trains; Darbhanga- AyodhyaAnand Vihar Terminal Amrti Bharat Express and Malda Town- Sir M Visvesvarya Terminus (Bengaluru) Amrit Bharat Express.
The IR plans to manufacture 10,000 non-air-conditioned coaches by fiscal year 2025-26 to address frequent overcrowding, officials said told HT, asking not to be named.
More than half of these coaches will be general seating, a move meant to accommodate passengers after a spree of incidents where those without reservations occupied reserved AC coaches during rush travel.
“The rolling stock plan for the next two years was sanctioned Thursday by the railway board,” an official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “This two-year program will meet 17% of our current non-AC coach inventory.”
The composition of passenger trains, to be sure, depends on the route and the service. For instance, some trains may be entirely air-conditioned, some may have only a handful of non-AC coaches, while some others might have more non-AC than AC coaches.
The railways currently operate about 55,000 non-AC coaches, deployed across 11,000 pairs of trains. The number of non-AC coaches in use in 2019-20 or pre-pandemic, as per railways officials, was around 45,000. A railway board official explained, “The demand for rail service is dynamic. The coach production program is based on seasonal variations and passenger traffic growth.”