CHENNAI: The premiere production unit of Indian Railways, the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) at Perambur in Chennai, has been sanctioned a project for manufacturing stainless steel coaches for the first time in the country. According to Vijay P Meshram, Controller of Stores, ICF, stainless steel coaches are less in weight when compared to the present mild steel bogies. Pointing out that the new technology would augment for high-speed bogies, he said that the life span of stainless steel coaches was higher than that of the mild steel bogies by 10 years.Addressing a gathering during the Independence Day celebrations at ICF on Monday, Meshram said in the previous year, ICF had churned out 1,503 coaches, which was an all-time record production. A total number of 43,551 coaches had been produced till July 2011 by ICF since its inception, Vijay P Meshram informed.He said, “ICF has been sanctioned a project of Rs 250 crore for manufacturing technologically upgraded coaches of stainless steel shells and high speed bogies and an increase in capacity from 1,500 to 1,700 coaches.” The new bogie facilities and shell manufacturing facilities are likely to be completed by March and August 2013 respectively, he added.Meshram also said that 4.6 crore units of electricity had been generated through the windmills installed by ICF in Tirunelveli district till the end of May 2011.In the financial year 2010-11, ICF had generated two crore units of electricity and met 80 per cent of its electrical energy requirements from green energy.
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