On track with India’s rapid rail growth

Sudeep Mukherjee, Trelleborg’s Head of Sales and Customer Service for rail in India, says: "The rail market is very dynamic. In every budget, there is a lot of investment from the Indian government."

Andreas Wolf, Trelleborg's Team Manager for Railway Engineering, echoes this: "It's a huge market. Where I'm sitting in Switzerland, we sometimes have a mountain train project where we talk about 24 air spring systems. For Indian projects, we talk about 2,400 air spring systems."

Supplier of choice
Trelleborg has already established itself as one of the key suppliers of anti-vibration systems in India, designing and manufacturing the suspension for the metro project in the country’s ninth largest city, Pune, which began operating in March 2022, and supplying air springs for the Delhi-Meerut Rapid Rail Transit System, which started operating in October 2023.
For Sudeep Mukherjee, the Pune Metro is a "Flagship project". The customer, the Indian rolling stock manufacturer Titagarh Rail Systems, chose Trelleborg as its sole suspension supplier.

"It's a landmark for us, because we received the order for all the suspension parts, including the primary and secondary suspension," he says. "Generally, original equipment manufacturers prefer to have two suppliers to mitigate their risk."

Global expertise and local execution
It was also, he adds, "a perfect combination of global expertise with local execution".

While design input came from Wolf and his team in Switzerland, all other aspects—from bidding to final assembly—were handled from Trelleborg’s offices and manufacturing facility in Bengaluru, India.

The RapidX trains operating on the Delhi–Meerut route, developed by Alstom, represent a new category of regional commuter trains connecting India’s capital to satellite cities. These trains operate like urban commuter systems within cities and accelerate to approximately 180 kilometers per hour on intercity routes.

"This was the first of its kind; a project conceptualized in India for connecting two cities. We were proud of our selection as a supplier," Mukherjee says.

While Trelleborg's core technologies are the same all over the world, they need to be adapted to local conditions in India, with the Pune and Delhi projects no exception.

Mallikarjun Uppu, Engineering Manager for Trelleborg’s antivibration solutions, says: "Indian temperatures are very high and if we use the same material in India as other places, it deteriorates fast because of the high temperature and pollution."

Indian metro systems also face significant overcrowding, meaning air springs and secondary suspension systems must withstand higher loads while remaining compact.

The parts for Pune received two epoxy coats and the team used a low-creep compound.
"The anti-vibration system has been successfully running for more than three years without any issues," Uppu says.

New technologies and designs
For the Delhi-Meerut project, Trelleborg supplied an innovative air spring developed by Wolf.
"I've long had a vision to do this design, and I saw the chance to use it when the request for quotation came from Alstom," Wolf says.

Clipped and slotted in place rather than vulcanized, the rubber parts for the new "butterfly springs" enable easy replacement after eight years, allowing metal parts to be reused.
"The innovation means there is no vulcanization," Wolf says. "It's a more sustainable product."

According to Uppu, the choice of aluminum for the top plate and ring made the system 30 percent lighter, thereby improving fuel and power efficiency.

The Delhi–Meerut project also had to meet strict HL3 standards for flame retardancy, smoke density, and toxicity. To achieve this, Trelleborg used a fire-retardant coating developed by its facility in Leicester, England.
"With this coating we can keep mechanical properties like creep and fatigue resistance, while meeting flame retardancy standards," Wolf explains.

The design allows for the integration of a hard-stop as well, further enhancing carriage safety.

The engineering team in Bengaluru was responsible for industrializing the design, sourcing aluminum components, conducting leakage tests, and developing a process for applying the fire-retardant coating. Team members in Leicester provided training to the Bengaluru staff on how to apply the coating.
"So, we made the design, and then they made it happen," Wolf says.

Reaping the benefits
The two projects show how Trelleborg's decision to significantly expand the facility in Bengaluru in 2019 has positioned the company to benefit from the Indian government's Make in India drive, which mandates 50 percent local content in government projects and gives local companies preference in tendering processes.

"For us, this is becoming a very big advantage," Mukherjee says. "We have the backup of the Trelleborg brand, which is well-renowned among OEMs, and we have a local manufacturing setup."

The Bengaluru facility now has the same testing and production machines as at Trelleborg sites in Europe.

"The material recipes are taken from Europe and mixed in India," Wolf says. "The quality and fatigue tests that we have done all fully meet our expectations. The quality level in India is very high."

A bright future
The facility’s order book remains strong, with contracts already secured for major infrastructure projects across India. The most prestigious is the Vande Bharat Express, the country’s next-generation intercity service that will double train speeds on existing rail lines. Some two hundred more routes are funded in India’s 2025 budget, with as many as four hundred trains expected over the next four years.

“It’s a next-generation project, and we’re proud to be a part of it,” Mukherjee says. “This is the Indian government’s flagship initiative, and it’s where the entire rail sector is focused.”

On Trelleborg.com you find more information about solutions for rail & mass transit.