Who were the early manufacturers of IR stock?

June 22, 2019, 12:07 PM
Share

Some early coaching stock was built in Great Britain and imported to India. This included ‘pattern’ coaches of the 1850s, many prototype steel coaches from 1913 and much EMU stock well into the 1960s until ICF’s production built up. However, most coaching stock was built on underframes which had been imported ready-made or in completely-knocked-down (CKD) form from Great Britain. Imperial preference excluded most other suppliers.

Virtually all railway workshops with a woodworking capability built coaching stock until well after Independence. including Parel, (old) Perambur, Hubli, Gorakhpur, Moghalpura, and others. Many of the smaller works did too, and there was much rebuilding and rebodying, which went on until the early 1950s at least. In fact some of the shops in Saurashtra were rebodying MG 4-wheel stock until the early 1950s!

A rebody can often be spotted because of its unusual size or shape. For example, the standard NG carriage underframe is 34′ 6″, and new stock built since its adoption will be no longer than 35′. But many lines have modern-looking stock which is anywhere from 29′ 6″ to 42′ in length, showing that it is a new body on an old underframe.

ये भी पढ़े – 10 ईज़ी वेट लॉस टिप्स

Incidentally, wagon building in India followed a similar path, except that steel wagons began to be built around 1902, and three Calcutta firms, Martin Burn, Indian Standard, and Jessops, became dominant. Eventually the only imported components were wheels, and even this changed after the Wheel and Axle Plant took up production of wheels.

Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL), at Bangalore, started producing all-metal railway coaches in 1950. Many of the workforce that were assigned to the coach-building unit of HAL were skilled aircraft engineers. HAL built about 10 coaches a month in the early 1950s. When the Toofan Mail suffered a collision in 1950, the only coach that was not completely destroyed turned out to be an all-metal indigenous coach built by HAL.

Source – IFRCA.org

Share

This entry was posted in 2 Railway Employee, STUDY NEW, Railway Employee