Indian Railways Set To Achieve 100 Per Cent Indigenous Manufacturing Of All Rail Coaches By 2022 End: Report

Indian Railways is set to achieve 100 per cent indigenisation of the components used in manufacturing of all the rail coaches by the end of 2022.

The complete indigenous manufacturing of rail coaches will help the Railways in ending its dependence on other countries including China for the components required in the coach production.

At present, the Indian Railways' production units - Integral Coach Factory (ICF), Rail Coach Factory (RCF) and the Modern Coach Factory (MCF) - manufacture the Linke Hofmann Busch (LHB) coaches. The coaches manufactured by these units are completely indigenous except for the wheels and axels, reports Times of India.

The factories currently import wheel discs and semi-finished axels from China.

In recent years, the Railways has reduced the import component of manufacturing part to around 1.6 per cent of the the total value of the items, sources were quoted in the report as saying.

In a bid to reduce the share of imports further, the Railways is now planning to source the remaining imported items like wheels and axels from Indian manufacturers.

According to the report, the Railways imported around 60,000 imported LHB wheels in 2020-21, which is the annual requirement of such wheels.

Further, around 4,000 axels, constituting nearly 18 per cent of Indian Railways' annual requirement, were also imported.

The LHB coaches use forged wheels, which were reportedly not manufactured in the country while the axels were imported because of the capacity constraints.

Howver, the Railways has now taken several steps to indigenise these components by roping in the manufacturers like Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) and Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL).

“Steps have been taken to indigenize forged wheel manufacturing through SAIL, Durgapur and Forged Wheel Plant of RINL being set up at Raebareli. Indian Railways have entered into an assured off-take contract with the Forged Wheel Plant of RINL for 80,000 wheels per annum that encouraged them to set up this plant. It is scheduled for commissioning shortly,” an official was quoted as saying.

SAIL, Durgapur, which was primarily manufacturing wheels for locomotives, has started manufacturing LHB wheels too, the official said.

“They have manufactured and delivered about 400 wheels that are on trial. It has a capacity to manufacture about 60,000 forged wheels of all types. Thus, with these steps a capacity of 1.1 lakh LHB wheels shall be available in India and this will be more than the annual requirement of LHB coaches,” the official added.