Fitting Engine to Coaches: Indian Railways presents Machine Tool Industry with Opportunities

Indian Railways seems to be pushing boundaries these days. With the government hitting the fast track for designing coaches, wagon procurement, manufacturing state-of-the-art train sets, railways provides significant opportunities for manufacturing. The machine tool industry needs to stay tuned for these big-ticket projects.

There is some good news. Integral Coach Factory (ICF) which built a record 2,503 coaches in FY 2017-2018 is now aiming at manufacturing around 3,000 coaches in the next year besides supplying 80 world-class coaches to Sri Lanka. With the railways planning to invest Rs.318 billion on diesel and electric locomotives, wagons and passenger coaches, manufacturers can look forward to some orders.

Railways is also moving away from the annual tender concept of procuring wagons. It is coming up with a bulk tender for 38,000 wagons through the reverse auction method. The railways took this decision considering the needs of private players who are likely to transport coal and cement on their own. The bids are expected to be floated within the present quarter.

The government is also phasing out diesel locomotives and replacing them with electric ones over a period of 5 years. It is also planning to manufacture high-speed ‘engine-less’ train sets which is a significant upgrade since the induction of Linke Hoffman Busch (LHB). These trains will be manufactured at ICF in Chennai. Railways is shifting to LHB coaches as a move to advance Railways to the next stage of growth.

Such massive expansion in terms of coach production is expected to increase the demand for machine tools such as special-purpose wheel lathes, light-rail transit systems, and heavy-duty single and double column vertical turning lathes, large bridge type milling machines, horizontal lathes, and special machines.

Indian machine tool industry needs to gear up to advance technologies and latch on to the opportunities in this sector.