The Hindu Business Line : Railways planning to increase coach height

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New Delhi Jan. 23 Indian Railways is considering a proposal to test coaches with slightly higher heights in the non-air conditioned segment in order to accommodate more berths per coach. These coaches would have three side berths along the length of the coach as against two side berths along the coach length.

The Ministry has already decided to try out such an option of increasing the height of AC three-tier coach by almost 17 centimetres to accommodate more berths along the train length. This is being test tried in the second variant of low-cost AC coach (to be used in Garib Rath trains) whereby each coach can accommodate 81 berths as against 64 in the AC III tier coaches in use.

Under trial

The height of AC III tier coaches have bee increased to 483.1 cm from 421.3 cm to accommodate 81 seats. These coaches are now under trial in Rail Coach Factory (RCF) Kapurthala.

"We are now considering trying out a similar design in the non-AC segment as well," said official sources, adding that the idea is to try and increase the capacity of each coach by 10-15 per cent. The non-AC sleeper coaches being used by Railways have 72 berths.

If successful, this move would bring down the unit cost of transportation and push down the cost. On an average, the Indian Railways charges about 30.5 paise per passenger per kilometre in the sleeper classes on its broad gauge network.

Ever since Mr Lalu Prasad has taken over as the Railway Minister, he has stressed on not increasing the fares for passengers. In this backdrop, the Railways would have to work out various ways to lower the transportation cost so that it does not increase its losses in the passenger segment.