ICF to design air-conditioned coach for Nilgiri Mountain Railway

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT THE HINDU  CHENNAI,JULY 05, 2017 

Economical option:A train for the Kolkata Metro was flagged off on Tuesday.V. GanesanV_GANESAN 

Vistadome tourist coach is already running on Visakhapatnam-Araku valley route

The Nilgiri Mountain Railway may soon have an air-conditioned tourist coach attached to it, made at the Integral Coach Factory (ICF).

Sources at ICF said such coaches, which offer a panoramic view of the tourist destinations, with various facilities such as large glass windows and roof, rotatable seats and LED lights, are in huge demand. The executive class tourist coach has already been introduced on a train running between Visakhapatnam and Araku valley.

On Tuesday, A.K. Mittal, Chairman, Railway Board, New Delhi and S. Mani, General Manager, ICF, inspected one of the vistadome tourist coaches that was manufactured at ICF. Mr. Mittal also flagged off a new train for the Kolkata Metro.

Officials said the train, which has 8 coaches, was manufactured at a cost of Rs. 40 crore. This works out to only half the cost of imported Metro coaches.

The coaches, with stainless steel bodies, have been designed to be on a par with those running on Chennai Metro Rail stretches.

Egress system

Besides electrically operated automatic sliding doors and an LCD display system for passenger information, an emergency egress system that allows passenger evacuation if automatic doors don’t function is an additional feature of the new train.

As many as 376 passengers can be seated in a Kolkata Metro rake.

“We plan to send the Metro rake in one or two days,” said an official.

On the tourist coach, sources at ICF said this was the second coach with a capacity of 40 passengers that was manufactured at a cost of Rs. 4 crore for the train between Visakhapatnam and Araku valley.

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