The Rail Coach Factory at Kapurthala was set up in 1986 and produces passenger coaches for Indian Railways. It is one of the largest coach builders in the world by output.
It was located in Punjab as a deliberate industrial investment during a period of severe unrest in the state, and its construction and staffing were a political act as much as an economic one.
It builds the LHB coaches now standard on Indian long-distance trains, and it built the Vande Bharat shells in partnership with the Chennai works.
It is the largest single industrial employer in Punjab and effectively a company town on the edge of Kapurthala.
Punjab has very little large-scale public sector industry compared with other states of its income level, and this is the principal exception.
The factory employs several thousand directly and supports a larger number in ancillary units around Kapurthala that supply components. Its township has its own schools, hospital and housing.
The LHB design was licensed from a German manufacturer in the 1990s and the factory now builds the great majority of the coaches on India's long distance network, along with shells for some of the newer train sets.
It was announced in a period when central industrial investment in Punjab had almost stopped because of the security situation, and it is one of very few large public sector plants placed in the state in the last fifty years.