CHENNAI: The Indian Railways has rolled back its earlier decision to stop the production of Vande Bharat chair cars after completing 120 train sets. The Railway Board has now issued an order to manufacture 1,500 Vande Bharat chair car coaches — equivalent to 88 rakes — over a four-year period from 2026-27 to 2029-30. Of these, 720 coaches will be produced by the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Chennai.
Official railway sources said that all Shatabdi Express trains operating on intercity routes, whose rake production has already been discontinued, will be replaced with Vande Bharat rakes. Of the 88 rakes planned, 68 will be 16-car train sets, while the remaining 20 will be 20-car configurations.
The Vande Bharat chair car rake is designed for a maximum speed of 160 kmph and is primarily intended for daytime intercity services. As of December last year, around 96 Vande Bharat chair car rakes had been manufactured by three coach production units — ICF, Rail Coach Factory (Kapurthala), and Modern Coach Factory (Raebareli).
Of these, 82 are currently in service, while a few are kept as spare coaches. A few additional rakes have already been allotted to Southern Railway, Northern Railway, and other zones, but are yet to be operational.
‘Policy decision taken to continue production of VB chair car coaches’
Under the new plan, ICF, RCF and MCF will manufacture 720, 336 and 444 coaches, respectively, taking the total to 1,500. In 2026-27, all units will together produce 23 rakes of 16-car train sets.
During 2028-29, ICF will manufacture 20 rakes of 20-car train sets, while MCF will build 12 rakes of 16-car sets. In 2029-30, 33 rakes of 16-car Vande Bharat train sets will be produced by all three units, according to an order, dated January 2, issued by the Director (Mechanical Engineering-Production Units) of the Railway Board. There were no plans to build Vande Bhart rakes during 2027-28.
Sources noted that ICF produced more than 88 Vande Bharat train sets between 2018 and 2025. With Indian Railways shifting focus toward increasing production of the Vande Bharat sleeper variant, ICF was allocated the production of only 11 Vande Bharat chair car rakes for intercity services in 2025-26, while another 20 train sets were planned to be built by other units.
Beyond this, there were initially no further plans for chair car train sets. “There has now been a policy decision to continue manufacturing Vande Bharat chair car coaches, which are likely to replace the ageing Shatabdi Express rakes over the next four years,” a senior railway official said.