Integral Coach Factory
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Integral Coach Factory (ICF) is a manufacturer of rail coaches located in
Perambur Perambur is a neighbourhood located in the northern region of Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Etymology In Tamil, ''pirambu (பிரம்பு)'' means bamboo and ''ur (ஊர்)'' means city or place. Before British rule, this place was wid ...
,
Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...
,
Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a States and union territories of India, state in southern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of India ...
, India. It was established in 1955 and is owned and operated by the
Indian Railways Indian Railways (IR) is a statutory body under the ownership of Ministry of Railways, Government of India that operates India's national railway system. It manages the fourth largest national railway system in the world by size, with a tot ...
. It is located in
Perambur Perambur is a neighbourhood located in the northern region of Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Etymology In Tamil, ''pirambu (பிரம்பு)'' means bamboo and ''ur (ஊர்)'' means city or place. Before British rule, this place was wid ...
, in the suburbs of Chennai. The ICF is one of the four rake production units of the Indian Railways, the other three being the Modern Coach Factory at
Raebareli Raebareli is a city in Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It is the administrative headquarters of Raebareli district and a part of Lucknow Division. The city is situated on the banks of the Sai river, southeast of Lucknow. It possesses many arc ...
,
Rail Coach Factory Rail Coach Factory at Kapurthala is a coach manufacturing unit of the Indian Railways in the state of Punjab. It is located on the Jalandhar-Firozpur railway line. History Established in 1985, RCF is a coach manufacturing unit of Indian Railw ...
at
Kapurthala Kapurthala is a city in Punjab state of India. It is the administrative headquarters of Kapurthala District. It was the capital of the Kapurthala State, a princely state in British India. The aesthetic mix of the city with its prominent build ...
and Marathwada Rail Coach Factory at
Latur Latur(लातूर) is a city in Indian state of Maharashtra, and is one of the largest cities of the Marathwada region. It is the administrative headquarters of Latur district and Latur Taluka. The city is a tourist hub surrounded by many ...
. The coach factory primarily manufactures
rolling stock The term rolling stock in the rail transport industry refers to railway vehicles, including both powered and unpowered vehicles: for example, locomotives, freight and passenger cars (or coaches), and non-revenue cars. Passenger vehicles can b ...
for Indian Railways but also exports railway coaches to other countries. ICF set a new record producing 2,503 coaches in the fiscal year 2017–18. It became the world's largest railway coach manufacturer, rolling out 3,262 coaches in the fiscal year 2018–19, up from 1,437 coaches in 2009–10, expecting to produce 4,000 units in the fiscal year 2019–20. A premier production unit of the Indian railways, the ICF manufactures a range of coaches, including
Linke-Hofmann-Busch Alstom Transport Deutschland, formerly Linke-Hofmann-Busch, is a German manufacturing company originally established in Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland) to produce locomotives and rolling stock. Its origins lay in the wheelwright business of Gottf ...
(LHB) ones, in addition to self-propelled train sets (SPTs) such as
electrical multiple unit An electric multiple unit or EMU is a multiple-unit train consisting of self-propelled carriages using electricity as the motive power. An EMU requires no separate locomotive, as electric traction motors are incorporated within one or a number ...
s (EMU).


Introduction

In 1948, the
Government of India The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, c ...
decided that a separate Railway Coach Building Works should be established with a view to attain self-sufficiency in coaches for Indian Railways. A technical Aid Agreement was concluded on 28 May 1949 with the Swiss Car and Elevator Manufacturing Corporation Ltd. of
Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
, who have been pioneers in the field of light-weight coach building for obtaining the necessary technical assistance in the establishment of a factory in India for building the coaches. A supplemental agreement was signed on 27 June 1953. After a comprehensive survey of several alternative sites for locating the factory, the vacant Railway land to the west of the Loco Repair Shops of the Southern Railway at Perambur was chosen as the final site in June 1951. The site is ideally situated with rail connections to the factory readily available and a nearby suburban railway station to bring workmen to the factory.


History

The Integral Coach Factory is one of the earliest production units of independent India. It was initiated by Chief Minister
K. Kamaraj Kumaraswami Kamaraj (15 July 1903 – 2 October 1975, hinduonnet.com. 15–28 September 2001), popularly known as Kamarajar was an Indian independence activist and politician who served as the Chief Minister of Madras State (Tamil Nadu) ...
and inaugurated by the first
Prime Minister of India The prime minister of India (IAST: ) is the head of government of the Republic of India. Executive authority is vested in the prime minister and their chosen Council of Ministers, despite the president of India being the nominal head of the ...
Jawaharlal Nehru Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (; ; ; 14 November 1889 – 27 May 1964) was an Indian anti-colonial nationalist, secular humanist, social democrat— * * * * and author who was a central figure in India during the middle of the 20t ...
on 2 October 1955. Later the Furnishing Division was inaugurated on 2 October 1962 and the production of fully furnished coaches steadily increased over the years. The total estimated cost of the factory was 74.7 million. In full production, about 350 broad-gauge coaches per annum are produced. The number of persons sent to Switzerland from the Integral Coach Factory for training in technical jobs in 1954 and 1955 was 64.


Manufacturing

The ICF consists of two main divisions, namely, shell division and furnishing division. The shell division manufactures the skeleton of the rail coach, while the furnishing division is concerned with the coach interiors and amenities. An ancillary unit to the ICF is being built in
Haldia Haldia is an industrial port city in Purba Medinipur in the Indian state of West Bengal. It is a major river port and industrial belt located approximately southwest of Kolkata near the mouth of the Hooghly River, one of the distributaries of ...
,
West Bengal West Bengal (, Bengali: ''Poshchim Bongo'', , abbr. WB) is a state in the eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabitants within an area of . West Bengal is the fourt ...
for furnishing
diesel multiple units A diesel multiple unit or DMU is a multiple-unit train powered by on-board diesel engines. A DMU requires no separate locomotive, as the engines are incorporated into one or more of the carriages. Diesel-powered single-unit railcars are also ...
. ICF manufactures more than 170 varieties of coaches including the
Kolkata Metro The Kolkata Metro is a rapid transit system serving the city of Kolkata in West Bengal, India. , it has two operational lines, a line from Dakshineswar to Kavi Subhash and a line from Salt Lake Sector V to Sealdah, for a total of . Four o ...
rakes for BHEL, NGEF, Medha, first and second class coaches, pantry and kitchen cars, luggage and brake vans, self-propelled coaches,
electric Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by ...
(EMU), diesel ( DMU) and mainline electric multiple unit (MEMU), metro coaches and diesel-electric tower cars, accident relief medical vans (ARMV), inspection cars (RA), fuel test cars, track recording cars and luxury coaches. The plant employs about 11,095 people and manufactures about 2000 coaches per year. ICF churned out 1,503 coaches in 2010ICF to set up a stainless steel coaches manufacturing plant
/ref> and in August 2011, ICF was sanctioned a project for manufacturing stainless steel shells and high-speed bogies and an increase in capacity from 1,500 to 1,700 coaches. In 2013–14, it built 25
LHB coach Linke Hofmann Busch (LHB) coach is a passenger coach of Indian Railways that is developed by Linke-Hofmann-Busch of Germany (renamed Alstom LHB GmbH in 1998 after the takeover by Alstom and now known as Alstom Transport Deutschland) and mostly ...
, 248 air-conditioned and 1185 non-AC coaches. It plans to increase its manufacturing capacity of LHB coach. It has set a target to manufacture 300 LHB coach in 2014–15 and reach a capacity of 1000 LHB coach by 2016–17. Now, the conventional type of coaches of ICF design has been completely dispensed with and ICF is manufacturing all steel all welded modern LHB coach fully. ICF has turned out a record outturn of 2277 coaches during the year 2016–17 consisting of more than 50 variants involving high technological inputs, meticulous planning and execution. In 2019, ICF produced 4300 coaches. A total of 60,000 coaches had been produced till end of December 2019, by ICF since its inception. This makes ICF the largest rail coach manufacturer in the world. On an average, the ICF turns out about 10 coaches of various types in a single day. ICF has also turned out the first semi high speed train set of India, the Train 18, later christened as
Vande Bharat Express The Vande Bharat Express, previously known as Train 18, is a semi-high-speed, electric multiple unit train operated by Indian Railways. It was designed and manufactured by the Integral Coach Factory, Chennai. The first train was manufactured in ...
, which was flagged off by the Prime Minister of India on 15 February 2019 runs between New Delhi Railway Station and
Varanasi Junction Railway Station Varanasi Junction railway station (station code: BSB), also known as Varanasi Cantt railway station, is the main railway station serving the city of Varanasi. The other key railway stations in Varanasi Metro area are (formerly Manduadih), , P ...
. One more Vande Bharat Express train set manufactured by ICF is now running between New Delhi Railway Station and
Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Katra Railway Station Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Katra railway station (station code: SVDK) is a railway station on the Jammu Udhampur Srinagar Baramulla Railway Link in the Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. It mainly serves for the town of Katra where the ...
.


Exports

ICF also exports rail cars to various countries. It exported its first 47 bogies to
Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...
in 1967 and has since exported 361 bogies and 447 coaches to over 13 Afro-Asian countries. The last order from Sri Lanka for supplying 20 rakes of six coach DEMUs earned ICF 126
crore A crore (; abbreviated cr) denotes ten million (10,000,000 or 107 in scientific notation) and is equal to 100 lakh in the Indian numbering system. It is written as 1,00,00,000 with the local 2,2,3 style of digit group separators (one lakh is e ...
.


Other

A Regional Railway Museum is situated in the factory premises. It has a collection of nascent models of trains and models endemic to the
Indian Railways Indian Railways (IR) is a statutory body under the ownership of Ministry of Railways, Government of India that operates India's national railway system. It manages the fourth largest national railway system in the world by size, with a tot ...
. About 59.1 million units of electricity had been generated through the windmills installed by ICF in Tirunelveli district in 2011 which met 80 percent of the plant's electrical energy requirements.


Controversies

The air-conditioned train-sets manufactured by ICF for
Kolkata Metro The Kolkata Metro is a rapid transit system serving the city of Kolkata in West Bengal, India. , it has two operational lines, a line from Dakshineswar to Kavi Subhash and a line from Salt Lake Sector V to Sealdah, for a total of . Four o ...
allegedly broke down causing disruption of services. According to newspaper reports, the air-conditioned rakes were sent to Kolkata without conducting dry runs because the ICF did not have third rail testing facilities.


See also

*
Diesel Locomotive Factory, Marhowrah The Diesel Locomotive Factory, Marhowrah is a joint venture of GE Transportation of the US with Indian Railways for the production of 1000 high-power freight locomotives over a period of 10 years designed to run on Indian railway tracks. This fac ...
*
Electric Locomotive Factory, Madhepura The Electric Locomotive Factory, Madhepura is a joint venture of Alstom SA of France with Indian Railways for the production of 800 high-power locomotives over a period of 11 years designed to run on Indian tracks at . The manufacturing has sta ...
*
Chittaranjan Locomotive Works Chittaranjan Locomotive Works (CLW) is an electric locomotive manufacturer based in India. The works are located at Chittaranjan in the Asansol Sadar subdivision of West Bengal, with an ancillary unit in Dankuni. The main unit is 32 km f ...
,
Asansol Asansol is a (Tier-II) metropolitan city in the Indian state of West Bengal. It is the second largest and most populated city of West Bengal and the 33rd largest urban agglomeration in India. Asansol is the district headquarters of Paschim Bar ...
*
Banaras Locomotive Works The Banaras Locomotive Works (BLW) (formerly Diesel Locomotive Works (DLW)) in Varanasi, India, is a production unit of Indian Railways. DLW stopped manufacturing diesel locomotives in March 2019 and was renamed BLW in Oct 2020. History Founde ...
,
Varanasi Varanasi (; ; also Banaras or Benares (; ), and Kashi.) is a city on the Ganges river in northern India that has a central place in the traditions of pilgrimage, death, and mourning in the Hindu world. * * * * The city has a syncretic t ...
*
Modern Coach Factory, Raebareli Modern Coach Factory, Raebareli (formerly Rail Coach Factory, Raebareli) or MCF Raebareli is a rail coach manufacturing unit of the Indian Railways at Lalganj near Raebareli in Uttar Pradesh. The factory is one of the coach production unit ...
*
Rail Coach Factory, Kapurthala Rail Coach Factory at Kapurthala is a coach manufacturing unit of the Indian Railways in the state of Punjab. It is located on the Jalandhar-Firozpur railway line. History Established in 1985, RCF is a coach manufacturing unit of Indian Railw ...
*
Rail Wheel Plant, Bela Rail Wheel Plant, Bela (Hindi: रेल पहिया कारखाना, बेला) is an independent Production Unit of Indian Railways. It is situated in Bela Gram Panchayat, Dariapur Block, Parsa in Saran district of Bihar. It wa ...
*
Rail Wheel Factory Rail Wheel Factory, Yelahanka (RWF) (also known as Wheel and Axle Plant) is a manufacturing unit of Indian Railways, producing wheels, axles and wheel sets of railroad wagons, coaches and locomotives for the use of Indian Railways and overseas c ...
,
Yelahanka Yelahanka is now a suburb of Bangalore in the state of Karnataka and one of the zones of BBMP. It is the oldest part of present Municipal Bengaluru (Bangalore) city and is in the north of the city. It is Nadaprabhu Kempegowda I, of the Yelaha ...
*
Titagarh Wagons Titagarh Wagons Limited is an Indian shipbuilder, defense, railway wagon manufacturer headquartered in Kolkata, West Bengal. The company manufactures coaches for the Indian Railways, bailey bridges, and mining equipment. A subsidiary, Titagarh M ...
,
Titagarh Titagarh is a city and a municipality of North 24 Parganas district in the Indian state of West Bengal. It is close to Kolkata and also a part of the area covered by Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA). Geography Location Titaga ...
* List of locomotive builders by countries


References


Further reading

* *


External links

*
Conventional ICF coach vs LHB coach and list of trains using LHB coach
{{Railways in Southern India Companies based in Chennai Economy of Chennai Coach and wagon manufacturers of India 1955 establishments in Madras State Industrial buildings completed in 1955