Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Saturday visited the Integral Coach Factory and inspected the manufacturing of Vande Bharat trains at the facility here. On a brief visit to the city, Vaishnaw, accompanied by senior officials of the ICF, took stock of the production of the latest new-generation high-speed trains and went around the sprawling campus. "Inspected Vande Bharat train production at ICF, Chennai," he said and shared images of his visit to the factory in a social media post. Later, the Minister interacted with the officials and staff at the ICF and also took photographs with them.

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In 2018-19, ICF rolled out the country's first semi-high-speed train set popularly known as the 'Vande Bharat Express' with Prime Minister Narendra Modi flagging off the first train from New Delhi to Varanasi. During the second week of October 2022, ICF achieved the distinction of having turned out 70,000 plus coaches since its inception in 1955, which is the highest by any passenger coach manufacturer in the world.

 

Earlier in the day, Vaishnaw unveiled a special train that would be run on heritage routes across the country. He inspected a train modified as a steam locomotive train at the Dr MGR Central Railway Station here and said more such trains would be introduced on heritage routes in the coming months across the country.

Vaishnaw, on the occasion, also undertook a review meeting with the top officials of Southern Railway at its headquarters here, and discussed matters concerning safety, the progress of infrastructural and station redevelopment projects, speed enhancement works, and timetabling of trains, among others. Southern Railway General Manager R N Singh gave a presentation on the performance of the zone that was commended by the Minister. Vaishnaw instructed the authorities to take up corrective action wherever it was required, a press release said.