Railways to roll out 10 Vande Bharat trains connecting 40 cities

The Indian Railways plans to roll out at least 10 new semi-high speed Vande Bharat Express trains, linking around 40 cities, to honour 75 years of Independence of India by August 2022. An engineering company, Medha, was given the contract to provide the electrical systems for 44 Vande Bharat train sets in February. Now, it has told the railway authorities to improve its production plan so that by March 2022, at least the rolling out of two prototype trains can be done, following every trial run. According to the media sources, there is a contract condition that apart from all required testing and trials to pass a Vande Bharat train set, the prototype should also finish commercial operation of 1 lakh km with passengers before production of the lot. As per the officials' estimations, if all three manufacturing units are put for utilisation, the national transporter can produce nearly 67 Vande Bharat train sets. A Vande Bharat train, a self-propelled train set, has 16 coaches, and it does not need an engine to operate. It is known as the distributed traction power, which is now becoming the norm over the world. Running by the distributed power mechanism, the train is a semi-high speed train set of India. It has quicker acceleration and deceleration and benefits to have a higher average speed despite halts. Currently, only two Vande Bharat trains are running between Delhi-Katra and Delhi-Varanasi. The plan is to prepare as many as 100 such train sets. The entire cost to produce 100 Vande Bharat trains, with 16 coaches each, would be about Rs 11,000 crore. The Ministry of Railway’s plan is to get maximum Vande Bharat Express trains operational by 2024. By using the three manufacturing parts of Indian Railways- Integral Coach Factory in Chennai, Modern Coach Factory in Raebareli, and Rail Coach Factory in Kapurthala. Image Source Also read: Vande Bharat must make most procurement locally Also read: Indian Railways plans 100% indigenous coach manufacturing by 2022