The majority of the 80 sleeper-class Vande Bharat trains will be manufactured at Titagarh Wagons Limited’s (TWL) Uttarpara plant, about 15 kilometers from Kolkata after a consortium of the Bengal-headquartered TWL and the PSU Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) won a Rs 24,000-crore order to supply and maintain the trains on Tuesday.
The manufacturing contract is worth nearly Rs 10,000 crore, and the consortium will supply the trains to the Indian Railways over six years. A 35-year annual maintenance contract worth Rs 14,000 crore is also included in the total deal. Each train will set you back Rs 120 crore.
According to reports on March 3, the consortium was the second-lowest bidder for manufacturing and maintaining Vande Bharat trains. The lowest bidder, a consortium of Railway Vikas Nigam Limited (RVNL) and the Russian company CJSC Transmashholding, will produce 120 Vande Bharats over six years.
TWL’s Uttarpara plant, which is being renamed Titagarh Rail Systems, will manufacture the main train components for the Vande Bharat trains, according to Umesh Chowdhary, vice-chairman and MD of TWL. He added that the propulsion system and electronics would be built at the BHEL plant in Bengaluru.
Titagarh Wagons (TWL) vice-chairman and MD Umesh Chowdhary told that the Uttarpara plant possessed the technological capability to construct the 80 Vande Bharat trains. “However, given the size of the Vande Bharat order, we will need some capacity expansion,” he added.Â
The assembling and maintenance would take place at the Integral Coach Factory facility in Chennai. “We have to deliver the first train within the next 24 months as per the conditions,” Chowdhary said, adding that Rs 1,000 crore had been set aside for capacity expansion, of which Rs 350 crore had already been invested.