Patna, May 30: President A P J Abdul Kalam will lay the foundation stone for a rail coach maintenance project at Harnaut in Nalanda district of Bihar today in the presence of state Chief Minister Rabri Devi, Railway Minister Nitish Kumar, his deputies Bandaru Dattatraya and A K Moorthy. To be set up at a sanctioned cost of Rs 98.74 crores, the project would have capacity for periodic overhauling of 600 coaching vehicles per year expandable to 1200 in future, an official press release said.
Spread over 64 acres with the workforce strength of 1,000, the coach repair facility of the project would be built with the latest concept of integrated maintenance for overhauling all types of coaches. The lay out would involve placement of coaches in a central shop with several groups carrying out repair activity simultaneously. The sub assemblies would be carried away to separate ancillary shops located in the vicinity and brought back after repairs through mechanised material handling.
Equipped with the latest information technology, the factory would meet the combined shortfall of 750 coaches per annum in three zonal railways -- eastern, central and south-eastern -- for their periodic overhaul. At present, there are 43 workshops for periodic overhaul with 1.7 lakh employees with an annual budget of Rs 2,600 crore. Out of this, 21 workshop undertake periodic overhaul of passenger coaches on broad gauge, the rest is for wagons. Harnaut will be 22nd repair workshop coach for periodic overhaul of coaches.
Indian railways have 6,800 locomotives, both diesel and electric, 33,000 coaches and 202,466 wagons on broad gauge system alone, beside there are six production units, which meet most of the rolling stock requirements, it added. Bureau Report