New colour for railway coaches

Indian Railways will give train coaches a makeover with new colours.

The Railway Board has given approval for repainting of all 55,000 Integral Coach Factory (ICF) coaches in a phased manner.

Railway Minister Piyush Goyal on Wednesday here inspected the first set of coaches sporting a new mix of colours — light blue, saffron and yellow.

"At present express and mail train coaches sport dark blue colour and these coaches will be repainted with new colour when they come for periodic overhaul, which is once in every 12 to 18 months," said an official from the Railway Board.

"There will not be any extra financial burden on the national transporter as the cost of repainting remains the same at Rs 60,000 per coaches," said the official.

There is also a proposal to paint different coaches with different colour like women only or disabled coach to enable them to identify it easily, said the official.

The dark blue coaches were introduced in the late 90s by the Railways by replacing the brick red colour.

The Railways also decided to paint new coaches with grey, navy and yellow for semi-high speed corridors which expected to run at 160 kmph.

In 2015, the railways roped Delhi based National Institute of Fashion Technology and Ahmedabad based National Institute of Design for providing designs for modern coaches.