To overcome the shortage of passenger coaches, the Railways proposes to set up new Coach Factories at Rae Bareilly, Kancharapara and Palakkad. This was announced by Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee while presenting the Railway Budget for the year 2010-11 in the Lok Sabha.
The Railway Minister said that the progress on the setting up of Coach Factory at Rae Bareilly would pick up during the year and a range of activities would be initiated. She also said that the establishment of Coach Factories at Kancharapara and Palakkad is in the process. Work on the loco factories at Madhepura and Marhora is also progressing, she added. A Diesel Multiple Unit (DMU) factory in joint venture/Public Private Partnership mode would be set up at Sankrail.
In addition, the Railway Minister announced that the Integral Coach Factory at Chennai would be further modernized and expanded by installing a second unit so as to equip it to manufacture a larger number of technologically upgraded coaches from its present level of about 1500 coaches per year.
Banerjee also mentioned about a request from the Government of West Bengal to set up a coach factory in Singur and said that the Railways would be willing to do so, provided the State Government handed over the requisite land to the Ministry of Railways after returning 400 acres of land to the unwilling farmers.
Banerjee said that there is a need to develop special types of coaches for the physically challenged and senior citizens. She said that with the upsurge in the economy, there has been an unprecedented growth of passenger traffic during the last five years resulting in increased requirement of passenger coaches.
She said that to overcome the shortage of coaches, we have to plan years in advance and therefore, the Railways are taking steps to set up new coach factories.
As a mark of respect to the contribution of the Armed forces personnel in defending the borders of our country the Indian Railways will run special trains titled as ‘Janmabhoomi' between Ahmadabad and Udhampur every week linking Jodhpur, Phalodi, Lalgarh, Biradhwal, Pilibanga, Mahajan, Suratgarh, Hanumangarh, Bhatinda, Faridkot, Firozpur, Jalandher, Chakki bank, Samba, Bari Brahman, Jammu-Tawi and Udhampur.
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