The Integral Coach Factory (ICF), manufacturers of rail coaches located in Perambur, Chennai, will turn out a new prototype of Train 18 - Vande Bharat Express semi high-speed trains - with better features in the current production year, said its General Manager AK Agarwal in his Independence Day message.

The first prototype rake is tentatively planned to be dispatched in March 2022, which will be put for commercial service tentatively by June 2022, said an official at ICF.

Incidentally, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday in his Independence speech from the Red Fort announced that 75 Vande Bharat trains will connect different parts of the country in 75 weeks to mark the ongoing 'Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav' as he compared the Vande Bharat train initiative to the UDAN scheme for flights.

In January, the Indian Railways finalised the tender for the Vande Bharat train sets (44 rakes of 16 cars each) that will be manufactured at three production units — ICF (24 rakes); Modern Coach Factory in Rae Bareli (10) and Rail Coach Factory in Kapurthala (10).

About 75 per cent of the components will be locally made. The Hyderabad-based Medha Servo Drives Ltd was awarded in January the ₹2,211 crore work for design, development, manufacture, supply, integration, testing and commissioning of the three-phase propulsion for trainsets, said media reports.

These trains were rolled out in October 2018 by the ICF and later flagged off as Vande Bharat on the New Delhi-Varanasi and New Delhi-Katra sectors. In December 2019, the IR tasked the ICF with making 720 coaches for running 45 Vande Bharat Express trains, but this was revised to 240 coaches a year later due to Covid-19 lockdown. There were also allegations that a particular company was favoured, and safety features were compromised. The specifications for Train18 were sent back to the drawing board.

The ‘better’ features in the new Train 18 will include four emergency windows; disaster light in all coaches; emergency push button; Centralised Coach Monitoring and higher flood protection of underframe equipment to ensure reliability during monsoon conditions, the official at ICF said.

Agarwal, who took charge as ICF's GM on August 3, said that despite the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions, ICF had performed to its peak by turning out 767 coaches from April to July 2021 when compared to 507 coaches during the same period last year. He expressed his hope that the target of producing 3,678 coaches given by the Railway Board for ICF in the current production year (2021-22) would be completed.

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