BANGALORE - State-run Bharat Earth Movers Limited (BEML) achieved a milestone when it delivered the country’s first standard gauge metro car on Friday.

Manufactured by compiling global standards, the metro train is a four-car formation, comprising two driving trailer cars and two motorcars with a capacity to carry 1,506 passengers.

BEML also delivered an 80-tonne aluminium wagon.

Karnataka Chief Minister, B S Yeddyurappa symbolically handed over the metro car to the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Limited (DMRC) Managing Director Elattuvalapil Sreedharan at a function in the BEML plant here, whereas the wagon was handed over by the Minister of State for Railways K H Muniyappa to C R Pradhan, Chairman and Managing Director of National Aluminium Company Limited (NALCO).

“The coaches are very good, that is what we can really be proud of. Coaches coming out of this (BEML) factory are as good as coaches produced anywhere in the world,” said Sreedharan.

He said that the BEML is in the process of establishing an R and D centre for metro trains.

“The government of India has already agreed for the R and D centre to be set up in Bangalore for which 1.25 billion rupees has already been sanctioned. All the preliminary steps to set up the centre have already been taken,” Sreedharan said.

Bangalore-based BEML won an order from DMRC to supply 13.65 billion rupees worth of rail coaches

The company also won a 16.72-billion-rupee order from the Bangalore Metro Rail Corp to supply 150 metro rail coaches by October 2010. (ANI)