CHENNAI: In what appears to be a move to phase out sleeper coaches in express trains, the Indian Railways has decided to produce 2,765 AC three-tier economy coaches of Linke Hofmann Busch (LHB) for 2023-24. However, only 138 sleeper coaches are planned to be produced. The ticket fare for the economy version of 3rd AC is 1.8 times costlier than that of sleeper class fare.
While the Chennai-based ICF will produce 1,105 economy AC coaches, Rail Coach Factory (Kapurthala) and Modern Coach Factory (Raebareli) are tasked to produce 880 and 780 coaches respectively. The 2,765 coaches were part of the total 6,978 coaches planned to be manufactured by the ICF, RCF and MCF for the upcoming financial year, revealed the official document.
Last year, the railways revised the standardisation of rakes by reducing the number of sleeper coaches to two in long-distance trains. It also ordered to increase 3rd AC coaches in a phased manner. The tariff of the 3rd AC economy coach is 6 to 7% as compared to the regular AC three-tier class. The economy version can carry 83 passengers as against 72 persons in regular coaches.
“The railways have already increased the production of 3rd AC coaches last year. For the first time, a whopping 2,765 coaches of single AC variant will produced by Indian Railways,’ said an official. The coaches were designed to provide enhanced passenger comforts such as AC ducting to individual vents, luminescent aisle markers, and illuminated berth indicators integrated with night lights.
The revised production planner for 2023-24 also revealed that railways decided to manufacture 1,072 train sets of Vande Bharat: of which, 736 will be produced by ICF and 168 each will be produced by the RCF and MCF.
Official sources from ICF said the composition of 736 trainsets can be either 46 rakes of 16 coaches or 92 rakes of eight coaches. “The coach composition will be finalised in a few months,” said an official.
As per the document, three manufacturing units of the railways will build 444 two-tier AC coaches and 220 AC first-class coaches. Surprisingly, ICF, which is the biggest coach manufacturing unit of the railways, will not produce any non-AC sleeper coaches. The 138 sleeper coaches will be produced by the MCF.