The forged wheel set plant by Ramkrishna Titagarh Rail Wheels Ltd, a joint venture between Ramkrishna Forgings and Titagarh Rail Systems Ltd, at Gummudipoondi near Chennai, will be fully commissioned by March 2026, said Prithish Chowdhary, Deputy Managing Director, Titagarh Rail Systems Ltd (TRSL).

The plant will have an annual capacity of 2.28 lakh wheels with 80,000 of it for Indian Railways for the next 20 years. The wheel sets will be for all types of trains, including metros and wagons and Vande Bharats, he told media persons at the company’s plant in Uttarpara near Kolkata.

Chowdhary said the Indian Railways had placed orders for 250 Vande Bharat sleepers with the private sector with 120 trains given to Kinet Railway Solutions, a joint venture venture between Russian rolling stock giant TMH and Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd, and 80 trains to a consortium of BHEL and TRSL, he said.

At the Uttarpara plant, the company inaugurated its production lines for the Ahmedabad Metro and for the Vande Bharat; both prototypes are expected within this financial year. Vande Bharat coaches will be ready by the Q4 of this fiscal or beginning of Q1 of next fiscal. The Ahmedabad Metro will be ready by Q2 or beginning of Q3, Chowdhary said.

“We are designing and building the full coach,” Vijay Subramanian, CEO (PRS), Titagarh Rail Systems Ltd, said. “We will deliver the prototype of the sleeper coach by March or by April of 2026,” he added.

Order book

Chowdhary said the company has received orders worth more than ₹1,200 crore in FY25 across business segments. This includes orders worth ₹900 crore for freight rolling stocks and orders worth ₹303 crore for propulsion systems. As of March 2025, the order book consists for 11,500 wagons and 1,583 Metro and Vande Bharat coaches, he said.

Subramanian said the Uttarpara plant has everything under one roof; no other OEMs in India have this kind of a set-up. There is also a propulsion unit, which is unique for this plant, he added.

The Titagarh facility lies on land that previously belonged to Hindustan Motors and is about 35 acres in size. Interestingly, he noted, an initial delay in the commissioning of the new fixtures and robotic machines, owing to a few issues related to issuance of visas for Chinese nationals, who are required to work on various equipment. “This led to an initial delay in the commissioning of the production line. However, things were sorted within few months,” he said.

(The reporter was in Kolkata at the company’s invitation)

Published on June 18, 2025