An old video of an impromptu tour into a swanky railway coach in Sydney is viral with a false claim that it shows metro coaches manufactured at the Integral Coach Factory (ICF), Chennai. The posts further claim that the coaches were made as part of the Make In India project.
The video is of railway coaches and not coaches of the Sydney Metro manufactured by French transport infrastructure major Alstom at its facility in Andhra Pradesh under the Make in India scheme.
The 45 second long video documents the plush interiors of a double-decker coach as it halts at a railway platform. The person recording the video gives viewers an experience of the two storied coach as well as the reversible seats in it.
The video has been viewed more than 29,000 times at the time of writing the article.
The video is doing the rounds on Facebook with the same narrative.
Under the Make In India scheme, the Indian Railways have been manufacturing coaches since last year.
Fact Check BOOM found that the double decker coaches shown in the viral video are that of the Sydney railway and not the metro services.
On relevant key word searches, we found a video featuring the same coaches running in the Lidcombe station that was uploaded to YouTube in September, 2015.
These coaches are made by Waratah trains of an international manufacturing company Reliance Rails. The images of the double decker coaches have been uploaded on their website. The company manufactured trains which have been in use by Sydney Railways from 2014 onward.
Sydney's metro coaches manufactured by Alstom not ICF
Furthermore, multiple netizens pointed out that the Sydney metro coaches were made by French company Alstom, and not the ICF, as claimed in the viral posts. Incidentally, Alstom is part of the government of India's Make In India initiative.
BOOM reached out to Alstom, who denied making the coaches that were shown in the video. In an email response to us, the company said, "Alstom has not built the double-decker trains that are featured in the video. Alstom has delivered 22 Metropolis trainsets for Sydney Metro, built at the Sricity plant (Andhra Pradesh). The last train was flagged-off on 06th December 2018."
Alstom got the contract of delivering 22 six-car trainsets to the Sydney Metro in 2014. These were manufactured at their Sricity plant in Andhra Pradesh. The Alstom's metro services started operating from April 2019.
Below is one such Make In India initiative Alstom coach, which is different from the ones in the viral video.