However, the truth on the ground is that the LHB coaches can be overhauled only at a select few railway workshops which in turn creates delays due to long waiting lists at these workshops
The accident of the Indore-Patna Express near Kanpur that killed over 150 passengers on board has brought the focus firmly back on the need to have safer Linke Hofmann Busch (LHB)coaches for Indian trains. However, the truth on the ground is that the LHB coaches can be overhauled only at a select few railway workshops which in turn creates delays due to long waiting lists at these workshops.
As of now, these coaches can be overhauled only at Western Railway’s Lower Parel workshop in Mumbai, Liluah Workshop in Howrah, West Bengal and Jagadhri Workshop in Yamunanagar, Haryana. Plans are afoot to build facilities for LHB overhaul at Lalguda Workshop in Secunderabad in Telengana and Dibrugarh workshop in Assam.
For example, the LHB coaches of Central Railway can be overhauled as per a railway rule at the Lower Parel workshop of Western Railway. The workshop has a capacity of overhauling 42 LHB coaches per month but there is a waiting list because WR has its own fleet of LHB coaches and also because it has to repair coaches of West Central Railway. Things came to a head two times last year due to a couple of derailments. On May 3, several LHB coaches of the CST-Ernakulam Duronto were damaged after a derailment at Madgaon. On September 12, another derailment, this time of the Mumbai-Secunderabad Duronto, left LHB coaches of the train damaged. In both cases it took over six months before the coaches could get a look-in at WR’s Parel workshop.
CR’s request to the railway ministry to allow it to upgrade its own Parel Workshop to overhaul LHB coaches made way back in May is expected to come in only by February next year, said officials. Meanwhile, as preliminary work the Parel workshop has overhauled three coaches in the past two months. However, officials agreed that the crunch will only increase at CR because it plans to increase its LHB coaches from the 220-odd to 450 by the end of March 2017. It is a problem that is haunting most railway zones that have LHB coaches. The railways added 1,248 LHB coaches in the financial year that ended in March 2016. This year the numbers could exceed 1,600 coaches.
THE LHB SAGA
The Railways makes about 450 LHB coaches against an annual requirement of 595. To meet the demand and speed up conversion, the Railways is augmenting facilities at its Rail Coach Factory in Kapurthala. It has spent Rs252 crore to make a 300 coaches per year facility at Integral Coach Factory Chennai. The Modern Coach Factory has been commissioned at Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh with a capacity of 1,000 coaches per annum. A new 400 coaches per year factory is on the anvil at Palakkad in Kerala and another 500 coach facility in Kolar Karnataka.
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