Indian Railways to revamp 2000 old coaches, plans to start project Utkrisht

New Delhi : In the recent development in Indian Railways, Piyush Goyal has mentioned that as many as 2,000 old coaches will be refurbished in 2018. The Railway ministry is all set to offer best of travelling experience to the train travellers. Besides upgrading old coaches, the department will introduce tray-tables and charging points for every seat, new fans, better seat covers, new taps in the toilets, photographs in the passages etc.

It has been estimated that the new upgradation in Indian trains will cost Rs 600 crore. Also, it has been learnt that there are plans to upgrade 40,000 number of coaches of the 59,000 coaches on its trains.

Rajesh Agarwal, member of Railway Board, was quoted in the report saying that the Indian Railways has taken several initiatives to change the interiors and exteriors of trains and also to improve the standards of railway coaches. He further said that while other initiatives are for selected trains, for express trains like Shatabdi and Rajdhani, an umbrella project has been taken up to refurbish their coaches on the basis of requirement. 

Indian Railways has plans to develop as many as 640 Utkrisht rakes in the next two years. The development would be done at a cost of Rs 400 crore. Under Project Utkrisht of Indian Railways, 140 rakes of mail/express trains are likely to be upgraded in the first phase, which involves giving a facelift to both, the interior as well as the exterior of the train’s rake. Another project by the national transporter called Project Swarn was launched to improve the condition of Rajdhani and Shatabdi Express trains. Under this project, 14 Rajdhanis and 15 Shatabdis are being upgraded.