Additional 69 rakes to be built for Metro Railway Kolkata
Kolkata: With expanding Metro routes in the city, additional 69 rakes with three-phase propulsion system will be built by Integral Coach Factory (ICF) for Metro Railway Kolkata. ICF has placed purchase orders on sub-assembly manufacturers and initiated rake production, Metro Railway authorities stated.
The three-phase propulsion for 69 rakes have already been placed on Medha Servo Drives, BHEL and Zhuzhou. By 2026, the holding of Broad Gauge rakes will increase from present 32 to 114. At present there are 17 Standard Gauge (SG) rakes of Green Corridor which increases the total number of holdings to 131.
To accommodate additional holding of rakes, a depot at Joka has already been built. Another depot is also being built at Newtown-Rajarhat by RVNL which shall be a double decker depot first-of-its-kind in Indian Railways. Out of 131 rakes in 2026, 117 rakes shall be indigenously manufactured BG rakes by ICF, Chennai and SG rakes by BEML Bengaluru, a Central Government PSU. The remaining 14 rakes will be procured from M/s Dalian Locomotive and Rolling Stock Co Ltd for which tender was floated in 2011-12. One such rake is currently in use. In addition to that, two new rakes from Dalian arrived at Noapara Shed on Sunday. It is expected that remaining eleven rakes will be shipped to Kolkata Port within six months.
The first 18 rakes of Asia’s fifth Metro network were built by Integral Coach Factory (ICF), which is a production unit under the Ministry of Railways. They had manufactured non-air conditioned Metro rakes with DC propulsion systems. These are no more in use as they have expired their
codal life.
After expansion of the Blue line from Tollygunge to Kavi Subhash, ICF built 13 air conditioned rakes with DC propulsion systems from BHEL, which were commissioned between 2010 to 2013. To reduce headway to five minutes during peak hours, ICF produced another eighteen rakes of three-phase propulsion built with M/s Medha Servo Drives. These were commissioned between 2019 to 2022.
