THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Indian Railways is all set to address the complaint that it has forgotten the common man with the arrival of the Vande Bharat trains. It has decided to triple the production of non-AC coaches from this year onwards. It has placed orders with coach factories in Chennai and Rae Bareli for new coaches. The Railways has also placed an order with Titagarh Rail Systems and BEML for ancillary facilities.

The newly built coaches will be added to both new and existing trains. Given the heavy rush in trains, more coaches will be added to existing trains. General coaches will account for 2,605 of the 4,485 coaches to be manufactured this year. There will be 1,470 sleeper coaches, with the rest being SLR, parcel, and pantry coaches. It will also feature Amrit Bharat coaches. Next year's production will include 2,710 general coaches and 1,910 sleeper coaches.

Several people had complained that the Indian Railways was ignoring ordinary passengers while continuously rolling out Vande Bharat Express with high ticket prices. The Railways then announced that it would launch Jansadharan Express. However, it was not able to launch the Jansadharan or Amrit Bharat Express at the same speed as Vande Bharat. Following this, the Railways decided to introduce more coaches in the next two years.

At present, there are 55,600 general coaches. Less than 1800 non-AC coaches are manufactured annually. Most of these are used for replacing old coaches.

Heavy rush in Kerala
Trains running in Kerala are experiencing heavy rush due to the insufficient number of coaches. Following a series of complaints, the Railways decided to add one coach each to four trains in the state. The new move is expected to solve this problem to some extent.

Number of general coaches at present- 55,​600

New coaches
2024- 4485 coaches
General- 2605
Sleeper- 1470

2025- 5485 coaches
Sleeper- 1910

Construction cost

Non AC- ₹ 72.16 lakhs
Sleeper-₹ 79.31 lakh
AC- ₹1.5 crore
Vande Bharat - ₹ 2.37 crore