Chennai's Integral Coach Factory Has Built 80,000 Coaches Since 1955 and Rolled Out a Record 3,007 in 2024-25

The Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Perambur, Chennai, had rolled out its 80,000th coach by 4 February 2026, when DT Next reported the milestone. The coach is part of the Amrit Bharat series, the fully non-AC trains Indian Railways has introduced, according to the PIB. In 2024-25 the factory built 3,007 coaches, a record, the Ministry of Railways said on 3 April 2025.

ICF is also where the first Vande Bharat train came from. The Press Information Bureau (PIB), the government’s press arm, said in February 2019 that the factory did the design, the computer modelling and the manufacture in-house, working with many suppliers on putting the systems together, in 18 months.

Swiss technology, a bullock cart and a first coach in 1955

A technical agreement with the Swiss Car and Elevator Manufacturing Corporation of Zurich brought broad gauge coach-building technology to what was then called the Perambur Coach Factory in 1949, Deccan Chronicle reported in 2014. The first machinery came from Chennai Port by bullock cart that year. The News Minute dates the start of construction to 1952 and says the factory began by making only shells, the bare steel bodies of coaches, which went to the railway zones to be fitted out.

Jawaharlal Nehru inaugurated the factory on 2 October 1955, and the PIB gives the same day for the first coach. The 100th coach came in 1957 and the 1,000th in 1962, the year a furnishing facility opened. News Today reports that ICF built about 74 coaches in 1957-58.

By its fiftieth year the numbers had changed. A PIB release of 18 February 2005 said ICF had produced more than 34,000 coaches of 200 types, with a capacity of 1,000 a year. It had exported coaches to 13 countries in Africa and Asia, earning Rs 6,978.95 lakh (about Rs 70 crore) in foreign exchange. It had built the first stainless steel coach for Indian Railways and, in 1991, a 21-coach metre gauge train for the Palace on Wheels. After the line was converted to broad gauge, ICF made new Palace on Wheels coaches in six months.

Five milestones from 48,708 to 80,000

Deccan Chronicle counted 48,708 coaches by September 2014. The factory had made 1,622 in 2013, which the paper called the most made in one place in a year. The 50,000th, an AC three-tier coach, was due to roll out on 6 July 2015, PTI reported, with the Railway Minister starting the rollout by video link from Rail Bhawan. The News Minute gives the same date for the milestone.

The 60,000th came on 21 May 2019, Swarajya reported, with Railway Board member Rajesh Agarwal present and ICF having just set a record of 3,262 coaches for 2018-19. The 75,000th followed on Thursday 27 June 2024, according to News Today, and it was part of the 69th Vande Bharat rake. The 80,000th was reported fewer than 20 months later. Between the PIB’s count of more than 34,000 in February 2005 and that milestone, ICF added about 46,000 coaches in 21 years.

The yearly count climbs the same way. ICF made 2,503 coaches in 68 variants in 2017-18, The News Minute reports. The PIB’s April 2025 table gives 2,829 for 2023-24 and 3,007 for 2024-25, an increase of 178. Indian Railways as a whole made 7,134 coaches in 2024-25, 9 percent more than 6,541 the year before, and ICF’s share was 3,007, ahead of Rail Coach Factory (RCF) Kapurthala with 2,102 and Modern Coach Factory (MCF) Rae Bareli with 2,025.

The factory that switched to a German coach design

The conventional coaches ICF made for decades are being replaced by a German design. LHB stands for Linke Hofmann Busch and the design has a centre buffer coupler. A PIB reply to the Rajya Sabha on 2 February 2024 said about 23,000 conventional (ICF-design) coaches had been replaced by LHB coaches since 2015. It lists the centre buffer coupler with anti-climbing features, which keep coaches from riding over one another in an accident, along with disc brakes, bio-toilets and larger windows.

DT Next reported in December 2016 that the Railway Board had ordered ICF to phase out screw-coupled coach production and build more LHB coaches. At that point ICF was making about 300 LHB coaches a year against an overall target of 2,486. The Kakodkar committee on rail safety had recommended the move in 2012, the paper wrote. PTI reported in July 2015 that the Railway Minister was to open an upgraded ICF facility for LHB production.

By 2025 ICF led the three factories in LHB output. A PIB release of 14 December 2025 gave 1,659 LHB coaches from ICF between April and November 2025, against 1,331 at RCF Kapurthala and 1,234 at MCF Rae Bareli. More than 4,224 together were made, 18 percent more than the 3,590 of the same months a year earlier. Between 2014 and 2025 Indian Railways made more than 42,600 LHB coaches, against about 2,300 in 2004 to 2014.

From Train 18 to most of the Vande Bharat trainsets

The Vande Bharat train is a self-propelled set, with electrical equipment under the coaches instead of a locomotive at the front, so it needs overhead wire along its whole route, which the electrification drive supplied. Our piece on the Vande Bharat figures covers its cost, speed and critics, so only ICF’s part is set out here. The first set had 16 coaches and 1,128 seats and was flagged off on 15 February 2019. The PIB’s 2019 release described it as costing less than half of global prices for such a train, without naming a comparison.

B.G. Mallya, then ICF’s general manager, told The Week in December 2023 that the factory suited the job because of its experience with many coach types, especially air-conditioned ones and self-propelled coaches. The PIB’s January 2026 explainer says the Vande Bharat sets are built at ICF with around 90 percent localisation, and that ICF received the National Energy Conservation Award in 2024 for making them.

Rolling Stock World reports that ICF built 96 of the 100 Vande Bharat passenger sets completed by the end of 2025. Under the plan for 2026 to 2030, ICF is to make 720 of the 1,500 cars in 88 new seating trains, the largest share, with Kapurthala and Raebareli building the rest. The first Vande Bharat sleepers are being built by BEML at Bengaluru on ICF technology, the same report says.

Metro coaches, luxury trains and exports

ICF’s range goes well past Vande Bharat. News Today lists electric and diesel-electric multiple units (the self-propelled trains used for suburban and short-distance services), a high-speed accident relief train, air-conditioned EMUs, the Golden Chariot and the Maharaja’s Express. In August 2022 the factory’s general manager, A K Agarwal, said ICF would build metro coaches for the Maharashtra Metro Rail Corporation from that financial year and planned 3,500 coaches in 50 variants. DT Next’s February 2026 report adds Kolkata Metro coaches, Namo Bharat Rapid Rail and Vande Bharat sleeper sets to ICF’s products, and says it exports to several countries in Asia and Africa without naming them.

The News Minute’s 2018 list of export destinations has 13 names: Thailand, Burma, Taiwan, Zambia, the Philippines, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam, Nigeria, Mozambique, Bangladesh, Angola and Sri Lanka.

Local content, wheels and the 24-coach sleeper

Mallya told The Week that 80 to 90 percent of a Vande Bharat train is made in India. Forged wheels were still imported, he said, earlier from Ukraine and China, and production had moved partly to the Durgapur Steel Plant, with progress slowed by constraints at the plant. More than 200 vendors supply ICF, according to the same article. For how the railway funds its passenger fleet, see our piece on how Indian Railways pays its way.

At the Independence Day function on 15 August 2026, ICF’s general manager said the factory would begin producing 50 rakes of 24-coach Vande Bharat Sleeper trains, Swarajya reported the next day. Production drawings for the coach structure, the connections between coaches and the underframe equipment are ready, and production is to start “soon”, with no date given. The 24-coach version is planned to have 1,224 berths, against 823 on the 16-coach sleeper that began running between Howrah and Kamakhya in January 2026.