S Railway wagon unit to up capacity

The Central Workshop of the Southern Railway at Golden Rock (GOC) has ambitious plans to enhance wagon manufacturing activity.

Jayanta Ghosh, Chief Mechanical Engineer, Southern Railway, told reporters that the annual wagon production capacity would be increased from 750 now to 1,000 wagons per annum over the next two years.

The increase in production capacity will be achieved by increasing productivity, deployment of new technologies and installation of robotic systems to reduce the total man-hours on the production line.

The workshop is also awaiting clearance from the Railway ministry following the recent Budget proposals to implement a Rs 75-crore project for modernisation of the 77-year-old GOC.

Commenced in 1962, and over the last four decades, 32,334 wagons in 47 varieties have been manufactured by GOC. This includes 1,450 low-platform container flat wagons worth Rs 270 crore for the Container Corporation of India Ltd.

Orders from Concor worth Rs 201 crore are in progress to roll out 990 flat wagons. Till date, 720 wagons have been despatched. Another order for 1,125 wagons worth Rs 285 crore has been received by the workshop.

While the three railway workshops in India, including GOC, meet requirements to the extent of about 75 per cent of flat wagons of Concor, these workshops are fully engaged and unable to accept fresh orders from other clients.

Now that the floodgates have been opened to private container traffic, many an entrepreneur has evinced interest in purchasing wagons from GOC.

The list includes the Indian Container Leasing Company Limited, Chennai (Balmer Lawrie Group), Associated Aviations Private Limited, New Delhi and the Steel Authority of India Limited for flat type container wagons. For box wagons, SAIL, Zelan Constructions Industries Private Limited and others have sent in business inquiries to GOC.

Earlier, flagging off the 33rd rake containing 45 flat wagons to Concor, Jayanta Ghosh mentioned that apart from wagon production, GOC had rehabilitated and exported 48 meter gauge wagons to Malaysia through Ircon, resulting in a contribution of Rs 5.1 crore to Indian Railways' coffers in the present fiscal.

He also inaugurated the second phase of the effluent treatment plant at the workshop which has been installed at a cost of Rs 2 crore. The treatment system will process about 110 kilolitres a day.