Rlys to speed up coach replacement

Shaken railway authorities on Monday decided to speed up the replacement of old coaches with safer German-designed ones.

LHB coaches, developed by Linke Hofmann Busch and manufactured in India at a railway factory in Kapurthala, do not topple over or telescope into one another in the event of an accident, and will help minimise loss of life.

The Railway Board convened an urgent meeting, presided over by chairman A K Mittal, to take stock of safety issues. It reviewed the recently introduced measures and devices. This comes in the wake of the Indore-Patna Express derailment in Kanpur on Sunday, in which 145 people lost their lives. According to a senior official, the board discussed replacement of old-style (ICF) coaches with the modern and more secure LHBs on an urgent basis.

The first step would be to stop production of old-style coaches in all the manufacturing units of the Railways, and this would be done by 2019 or earlier. The Railways has three coach factories – Integral Coach Factory (ICF), Chennai; Rail Coach Factory, Kapurthala, and Modern Coach Factory, Rae Bareily.

At present, the Railways produce around 4,000 coaches per year. The Kapurthala factory manufactures only LHB coaches.

The other two units produce both old-styled coaches and LHBs. In total, 1,500 LHB coaches are produced every year. The Railways have 63,000 coaches, of which 53,000 belong to the old category.

“In fact, more than half of the LHB coaches are being used in MEMU (Mainline Electric Multiple Unit) and DMU (Diesel Multiple Unit) trains,” a top rail official told DH.

Officials admit that complete replacement is a distant dream because every coach has a life of at least 25 years. And, each costs Rs 1 crore, they said.

“To minimise damage, modern security features are being added to old coaches,” a rail official said. Only 15 days ago, the Railways had introduced an Ultrasonic Broken Railway Detection Device on a pilot basis in two zones, the North Central Railways and the Northern Railways. The Kanpur accident site falls under the NCR zone. “The device detects fractures through the passage of ultrasound rays. We have decided to fit it in both zones,” said the official.