RWF: Chugging its way to the global market

The Rail Wheel Factory (RWF), a unit of Indian Railways in Yelahanka that manufactures wheels, axles and wheelsets of railroad wagons, coaches and locomotives, is looking towards exports as part of its expansion drive.

It has touched revenue of Rs 1,000 crore last fiscal and is also looking at enhancing its capacity by setting a target of manufacturing 1.71 lakh wheels, 70,000 axels, and 64,000 wheelsets this year, apart from setting up new manufacturing lines to augment production. In the last fiscal, RWF had manufactured 1,31,131 wheels, 71,001 axels and 40,136 wheelsets. The IR rolling stock fleet consists of over 11,100 locomotives, 63,300 passenger & 6,900 other coaching vehicles and 2,51,256 freight vehicles.

The company meets the bulk requirement of wheels, axles and wheelsets for these rolling stock.

Recently, the company had reported its highest ever monthly production of wheelsets and loose axles and said that 6,258 wheelsets, 456 locomotives axles, 2,807 LHB (Linke Hofmann Busch) coaching axles and 33 EMU (Electric Multiple Unit) coaching axles in September 2019. Though a factory that manufactures wheels was set up near Patna recently, the RWF in Yelahanka is the only unit that manufactures all these items (Wheels, Axels and Wheelsets).

The beginnings

Speaking about the growth of the company, General Manager, Rajiv Kumar Vyas says, “The RWF was set up in 1980 basically to reduce imports of cast wheels for use in the railways. At that juncture, most of the demand for rail wheels (55%) was met from imports.”

The RWF was created to reduce this dependence on imports. It started with a revenue outlay of only Rs 100 crore and an annual capacity of 56,000 wheels and 23,000 axles.

It has increased manifold and we have touched the Rs 1,000 crore revenue mark recently.

“At this juncture, we fulfil almost 90% of the Railways demand for wheels, axles and assorted items. Import dependence on these equipment has come down to less than 5%,” he said.

Wheel manufacturing

The RWF uses cast steel technology in the manufacturing of wheels and utilises scrap steel collected from Railways’ workshops as raw material. The manufacturing is done on a numerically controlled automatic assembly line, which is mostly automated.

The wheels include Box N Wagon, broad gauge and meter gauge coaching, EMU, container wagon and locomotives. “We also have facilities for forging, heat treatment, rough and finish machining of axles. These are forged from the pre-cast steel blooms. Blooms are checked for chemical composition and micro/macro properties before they are taken up for forging. RWF also runs a wheelset assembly complex, consisting of an auto axle measuring unit, precision borers and a 300T mounting press. We are also supplying to multiple public sector undertakings such as BEML and BEL. We are also working on a project with the Kolkata metro,” says Vyas.

He adds, “We have also begun manufacturing wheels that can withstand speeds up to 130 kilometres, but that is yet to be validated. For high-speed trains, forged wheels are used. We will not be supplying wheels to projects such as the Bullet train project. As technology increases, we are seeing the longevity of the wheels increase as well. All old discarded wheels are put back into the forge and are recreated as wheels and axles again.”

RWF makes wheels for Box wagon, BG loco and EMU, MG loco and coaching, container flat wagon and LHB stock have been developed in-house.

Since setting up base in 1984, the company has been on a relentless growth trajectory and plans to keep on adding capacity, building more manufacturing lines and is looking at getting more automation in its processes.

For a company set up to bring down imports, RWF is going all out to focus on exports soon. “Exports is also a very important area that we are focussing on as we plan to reach surplus production levels soon. Since countries like the United States also use cast iron wheels, we are planning to export it to the US and Germany. We are also focussing on Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and a few African countries as well. We have already received the certification required to start exports,” points out Vyas.

Future plans

With talk of a freight corridor on the anvil, the RWF is confident that the demand for the wheels and axle sets are bound to pick up. “The recent doubling of tracks would mean more tracks will be freed up and there would be more opportunity for more wheels. We are looking at this as a huge opportunity and hope to augment our technology to keep up with the increasing demand.”