A Senior Section Engineer of the Integral Coach Factory here has been chosen for the national award by the Indian Railways for his outstanding contribution in increasing the productivity of Linke Hoffman Busch air-conditioned coaches.
P.G. Vijay Anand is among 28 officials from various zonal railways and production units across the Indian Railways who were given the award in the category of “New innovations/processes/procedures leading to economies in expenditure, improvement in productivity, import substitution etc.”
According to railway sources, Mr. Vijay Anand was the coordinator of the LHB AC coach production programme and he worked with all the departments in the factory in augmenting the productivity.
When there was a delay in supply of certain items, he suggested alternative materials that were built indigenously resulting in uninterrupted coach production.
In 2016-17 the ICF rolled out about 400 first, two-tier, three-tier, composite, executive class, chair car and pantry AC coaches. In 2019-20 the productivity increased to almost 1,200 coaches.
The increase in coach production expedited the rake conversion policy of the railways and helped in replacing the old ICF design rakes in trains like the Pandian, Vaigai, Rockfort, Nellai, Kanyakumari, Pothigai and other prominent express trains in Southern Railway. “The LHB rakes are not only safer and order better ride comfort but increase the revenue since the capacity of coaches is more,” an official told The Hindu on Thursday.
A. Sundar, Deputy Chief Commercial Manager, G. Rajkumar, Senior Divisional Medical Officer (Neurosurgeon), M. Esakki, Chief Staff & Welfare Inspector, Y. Selvin, Senior Divisional Operations Manager, T. Loganayaki, Divisional Engineer and Pradeep Kumar Das, Track Maintainer, were among others in the Southern Railway who got the 65thAnnual Railway National Awards – 2020 under different categories, the sources added.
