Chennai: Southeast Asian and South American countries have shown interest in the country’s first self-propelled Train 18 that was rolled out last year, said Rajesh Agrawal, Railway Board member (Rolling Stock).
However, the demand for the coaches that is presently running between New Delhi and Varanasi as Vande Bharat Express would be considered only after meeting Indian Railways need.
Rolling out the 60,000th coach manufactured at the Integral Coach Factory (ICF), he further said ICF would roll out 40 Train 18 trainsets in the immediate future.
“It is a matter of pride that ICF has rolled out 3,262 coaches last year (2018-19) making ICF the largest coach manufacturer in the world. In the next year itself, ICF will break its own record by producing more than 4,000 coaches,” Agrawal said in a statement.
In the current year, ICF would take up design, development and production of Train 19, a sleeper version of Train 18. Rs 2,500 crore infrastructure improvement projects are being planned for coach production units of the Indian Railways, added the press release.