Indian Railways is proposing to increase the construction of LHB stainless steel (SS) coaches and adopt stainless steel shells for ICF design bogies. LHB design bogies use stainless shells. Indian Railways started manufacturing stainless LHB coaches at Kapurthala-based Rail Coach Factory after a transfer of technology agreement with Alstom LHB of Germany. It had imported 24 coaches from Alstom LHB before the agreement was signed. Indian Railways has proposed a complete switch over to LHB SS coach production mode at the Rail Coach Factory in Kapurthala and suggested increasing the manufacturing capacity at Kapurthala to 1500 coaches per annum from the present level of 1400 coaches per annum at a cost of INR 37 crore.
