Indian Railways to float global tender for procuring 300 aluminium coaches

After the successful trial run of Talgo train, Indian Railway Ministry is almost decisive about procuring 300 light-weight aluminium coaches from the market to for faster inter-city travelling.

The main railway routes are already over-saturated and are posing a serious challenge for the railways' 'Raftaar' mission. So the biggest national transporter is seeking alternatives in light-weight aluminium coaches that will be an easy and time testing option to increase train speed on existing lines.

'Raftaar' mission has been initiated by Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu to increase the speed of passenger and freight services significantly. According to the railway ministry sources, a global tender will soon be floated to acquire lightweight aluminium trains.



"Instead of steel coaches, use of aluminium coaches seems to be the future now as the railways will gradually go for the light-weight material for faster journey on existing tracks," said a senior Railway Ministry official, adding, "A global tender will be floated shortly for this."

During the trial run, the light-weight aluminium coaches by Spanish Talgo and hauled by an Indian locomotive covered the 1,384km distance between Delhi and Mumbai in less than 12 hours. This is commendable compared to the 16 hours travelling time taken by Mumbai Rajdhani, the fastest train that currently links the two metropolises.

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"We are proposing to acquire 300 aluminium coaches to begin with which means about 15 trains with 20 coaches each can be pressed on inter-city routes such as Delhi-Kanpur and Delhi-Lucknow," said the official.

Though the trial was done on Talgo, the official said the procurement of trains will be made via open tenders in which any global company can participate.

Aluminium is expected to acquire a permanent place in the Indian high speed train sector, as the light-weight train uses less energy and moves faster in comparison to steel coaches. The high-speed train coaches between Mumbai and Ahmedabad will also be made of aluminium.

Talgo trains use tilting technology that is designed for not losing speed on curves. The official said they are considering all possible aspects to get the optimum speed on high speed trains.  "We are examining every aspect. A decision will be taken before floating the global tender."

He also confirmed that the Talgo-train design has to be modified to fit into the India rail system. The width has to be increased from the existing size and the footboard height needs to be increased to match standard platform height in Indian railways.  It is to be noted that the entire cost for Talgo trial was born by the Spanish company including the shipment of coaches from Spain to India and the Indian railways did not have to undergo any cost for that.