In an unprecedented endeavour, the South East Central Railway’s (SECR) Bilaspur Division has converted abandoned rail cars into offices. Inside such coaches, a team of engineers has set up an office, replacing the beds and seats with tables, chairs, cupboards, and trash baskets.
The Bilaspur Division has earned a lot of praise for this innovative idea of converting outdated air-conditioned Sleeper and General Compartment coaches into offices, which saved lakhs of rupees in building costs.
A team of engineers has built an office within the carriages by removing the seats and berths and arranging for desks, chairs, cupboards, and dustbins to be kept. A half-dozen persons can be accommodated in each of the two-room compartments. “After some small repairs, the toilet, wash basin, light, fan, and even the coaches’ doors and windows have been permitted to remain, and not much has been tampered with the previous version of abandoned coaches,” said Chief Public Relations Officer (CPRO) Saket Ranjan.
Ranjan said that the coach-office has also been
kept on the track just like the normal coaches of train with little modification of stairs to make it easy for the Railway staff to get in and out of the office. It looks like a normal bogie from outside and the colour of the coaches has been kept intact.
“Other old coaches are also being looked at in other divisions of the zone.There is a plan to make offices in the coaches that are not fit to be used so that the expenditure of office building to be prepared from the huge budget will be avoided”, he added. With the office building in Coach Maintenance Yard needing massive renovation, the team of Railway engineers redesigned the coach-office inside the depot saving the cost with unique transplantation.
