BR moves to overhaul its age-old coaches

The Bangladesh Railway (BR) has taken a move to repair its several hundred age-old coaches and add them to its fleet aiming at improving pro-people service.
As a part of the move, sources said, the state-owned agency has already taken up a project to overhaul 250 coaches and planned to undertake another project to repair 100 more coaches at a cost of Tk 790 million.
"These coaches are mostly metre gauge and more than 40 years of old," said an official, adding that some 60 broad gauge coaches are also to be overhauled.
According to official data, the BR has 930 age-old metre gauge coaches of which 496 coaches are above 45 years of age and 356 are more than 41 years of age.
Sources said both the BR and the private sector have repaired these metre gauge and broad gauge coaches in the railway's two workshops at Syedpur and Pahartoli.
The Bangladesh Railway having strong railway network from east to west and north to south of the country has so far gone through seven reform programmes, but it is yet to restore its past glory.
The BR which is operating trains and providing container services through its nearly 2900-km route has also taken an initiative to upgrade the signalling system in different stations, extension of loops, replacement of tracks and locomotives as part of its 20-year master plan.  
During the tenure of the present government, it has devised a master plan to set up more tracks and introduce more train routes aiming to provide commuters with cost-effective service.
As part of the plan, the railway authority has already taken measures to replace more than 500 coaches for making the journey for passengers comfortable and smooth.
Under this move, they have already received 119 new coaches. They will also get another 250 new coaches by this year. Besides, a move was taken to procure 400 more new coaches.
The officials said the initiative to involve the private sector in repairing coaches was taken to speed up the overhauling process. So far, 25 coaches have been given under the private sector for repair.
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