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Soumik Dey
Soumik Dey

RAILWAYS

Railway passenger coaches to get Rs 15,000 cr face lift

indian-railways-new-reuters The total cost involved in refurbishing and retrofitting rail coaches would be around Rs 15,000 cr, said Ravindra Gupta, a railway board member

In yet another ambitious target initiated by Union minister of railways, Suresh Prabhu, 40,000 coaches are to be refurbished by 2022-23 under 'Mission Retro-fitment'. Also, 32,000 older coaches are likely to get a midlife overhaul.

"This effort is geared to improve rail travel experience across all travel classes on Indian Railways," said Prabhu, while launching the railways 'Mission Retrofit'.

The expected cost of upgrading interiors of railway coaches is around Rs 30 lakhs per coach. Cost of retro-fitment, with new coupling gears and other works, would cost at around Rs 28 lakhs per coach.

The total cost involved in refurbishing and retrofitting rail coaches would be around Rs 15,000 cr, said Ravindra Gupta, a railway board member.

Cost of each passenger coaches vary between Rs 2 cr to Rs 2.4 cr and are manufactured from three coach manufacturing facilities of the indian railways. "For this mission, railway workshops will take up 40 per cent of the work and the remaining are to be completed with private participation."

The railway board have already approved two tenders of Rs 8,000 cr. About 2,500 coaches will be worked on at railway facilities. The three integrated coach factories of Indian Railways, manufacture about 1,000 to 1,500 passenger coaches yearly.

"Participation, so far, by private companies for our tenders have been good. But they will also not have this kind of capacity with them just now and that is how we have a six year timeline for fulfilling the retro-fitment targets," said Gupta. 

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