Taking into cogniscance the continuously increasing interest, and preferences of the general public towards rail travel, the Indian Railways is speeding up the expansion of its facilities.  Accodringly, the railways have added 583 additional coaches in General Class (GS) across various trains over the last 3 months. All these coaches have been added to the regular trains in the railways kitty.

Apart from this in November 2024, more than 1,000 coaches under GS category will be added across 647 regular trains. Approximately 1 Lakh passengers will be benefited daily by the addition of these new GS coaches. Work is in progress on the plan to include a substantial number of GS class coaches in the railway fleet in the next two years.

Dilip Kumar, Executive Director of Information & Public Relations of the Railway Board, said that general class passengers are among the top priorities of the Indian Railway. The Railways is working across a number of areas to provide maximum facilities to passengers in this category. 583 new GS coaches were manufactured during July to October 2024. These newly manufactured coaches have been added to 229 regular trains. Thousands of additional passengers are already getting benefitted by this. With the inclusion of more coaches in 647, about one lakh additional passengers will be able to benefit from train journey each day.

The ED added that over the next two years, more than 10000 coaches will be added to the Railway fleet. Of these, more than 6000 coaches will be devoted to the General category, while the rest of the coaches will be in Sleeper category. Over 8 lakh additional passengers of General Class will be able to travel by train every day. All these newly built coaches of GS category will be of LHB grade. This will help in making the journey comfortable and convenient. LHB coaches are comparatively lighter and stronger than the traditional ICF rail coaches. In case of an accident, the damage to these coaches will also be minimal, he added.