TIL Desk/National/New Delhi/ The Railways has undertaken a massive exercise of refurbishing 40,000 coaches with upgraded facilities and enhanced safety features at an estimated cost of about Rs 15,000 crore.
Existing coaches will be retrofitted with refurbished interiors, improved seating arrangement and newly-designed bio-toilets among other modern facilities. The refurbishment would cost about Rs 30 lakh per coach.
Besides, the state-run transporter will strengthen safety features in all existing conventional coaches equipping them with strong couplers to prevent capsizing during accidents. The LHB coaches are already equipped with strong couple system while conventional coaches do not have it.
The Railways would involve private players for the massive job of retrofitment of 40,000 coaches, slated to be completed over the next five years. “It is a challenging task as nowhere else has any railway undertaken work on such a scale,” Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu said after launching the retrofitting programme.
While 25,000 coaches will be upgraded this financial year, 15,000 new coaches will be manufactured between 2018-19 and 2022-23. The Railways also plans to replace the Integral Coach Factory’s coaches with German-made Linke Hoffman Busch (LHB) coaches from April 2018.
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