The Indian Railways has raised its locomotive production target for FY25 by 27% to 1,500 units, officials aware of the development said.
The national transporter will keep this annual production target unchanged till FY27, they said.
The railways have eight production units in the country where they make wheels, axles, locomotives and coaches. They had aimed to close the current fiscal with 1,180 new locomotives.
Underlining the push towards running more freight train services, the railways are looking at manufacturing 1,240 locomotives of the WAG 9H make in FY25. Another 260 locomotives of the WAP 7 variant will be manufactured – primarily for passenger train operations – the same year.
According to the latest plan, 1,300 WAG 9H locomotives will be made annually in FY26 and FY27, while 200 units of the WAP 7 variant will be manufactured every year in this period. Besides locomotives, the production plan for 50 Amrit Bharat trains has also been approved for FY25. This will mean production of 1,230 coaches at the production units of the railways.
A modest 4.6% upward revision from the earlier plan has projected in the overall coach production target for FY25, with 8,145 coaches to be rolled out from the railways’ production units. The difference is steeper compared with the production target of 6,560 coaches in FY24. This includes production programmes of Vande Bharat, and Amrit Bharat coach variants. Within these, Indian Railways is aiming for 5,688 coaches of the Linke Hofmann Busch (LHB) variant to be produced in FY25, up from 4,934 units planned for FY24. At 2,162 units, most LHB coaches will continue to be manufactured at the Modern Coach Factory, Raebareli. The railways are also targeting production of 3,017 self-propelled coaches in FY25. These cover variants for rapid metro, regional metro, Vande metro, and Gati Shakti trains, among others.
In this category, 2,016 units will be made at the Integral Coach Factory, Chennai, while 618 units are supposed to be manufactured at Rail Coach Factory, Kapurthala.
