LAHORE: The Pakistan Railways (PR) plans to locally manufacture as many as 295 high-capacity wagons with Chinese assistance by March and the related manufacturing units have been assigned targets in this regard.

Targets have also been assigned for manufacturing of over 170 high-speed state-of-the-art passenger coaches, including some brake vans by June 2027, according to a senior PR official.

“Manufacturing of modern high-capacity goods wagons and high-speed passenger coaches is part of PR’s plan to improve its freight and passenger services by inducting modern rolling stock in the system. Under this, the PR has started implementing this plan with Chinese assistance, placing orders for manufacturing of 820 wagons and 230 coaches about 4 years ago,” PR General Manager (Manufacturing & Services) Ghulam Qasim explained while talking to Dawn.

“A total of 200 wagons were manufactured in China and during this, PR officers and officials were also given training under the transfer of technology agreement. Similarly, 46 of the total 230 passenger coaches were also built completely in China and shipped to Pakistan,” Mr Qasim added.

He said that since the remaining wagons and coaches were to be built in PR’s carriage factories and workshops. For this purpose, Chinese engineers had arrived and the manufacturing had finally been started, he added.

In Pakistan, as many as 325 wagons had so far been manufactured and the work on the remaining ones was currently underway. The 200 wagons’ CBUs included flat container wagons (70), high sided open top wagons (70), covered wagons (20) and brake vans (20).

The 325 wagons manufactured completely in Pakistan included 200 semi knocked down (SKD) and 95 completely knocked down (CKD) units. “For manufacturing the remaining 295 wagons under a phased manner, the PR’s railways factory, Risalpur and Lahore Mughalpura workshops have been assigned the targets starting from November 25 and ending on March 30,” Mr Qasim maintained. It is pertinent to mention that the PR has been using hundreds of 1970 model German-made passenger coaches and it continued receiving this model till 1989. Later, it continued to refurbish the same 1970 model coaches until 2002 when it procured 175 coaches and another 200 in 2009.

In 2021, PR signed an agreement of $140 million – approximately Rs31 billion – with a Chinese company. Under the contract, the company pledged to manufacture 230 state-of-the-art passenger coaches, of which 46 were provided to railways as CBUs and the remaining 184 were planned to be manufactured in Pakistan under the supervision of Chinese experts.

Under another similar contract for manufacturing 820 wagons, a Chinese firm started manufacturing 200 CBUs and the remaining 620 were planned to be manufactured in Pakistan.

Published in Dawn, November 15th, 2025