New Delhi: With a view to reduce the travel time between the two cities, Indian Railways has replaced Shatabdi and Intercity Express on all major routes of the country including Mumbai-Pune and Mumbai-Ahmedabad. But is planning to start semi-high speed Vande Bharat trains. According to sources, 27 major intercity routes of the country were initially identified by the Railways to run Vande Bharat trains in the near future.
Confirming the development, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav said, “Indian Railways will get two more trains in August 2022, after that four Vande Bharat trains will be produced every month at various rail coach factories in the country including Latur”.
According to Vaishnav, the production of Vande Bharat trains at Marathwada Rail Coach Factory is likely to start in the next 6 months. When asked about the introduction of Vande Bharat trains on Mumbai-Pune route, Vaishnav said, “We are trying our best to introduce semi-high speed Vande Bharat trains on all major intercity routes by next year, but this rake Depends on availability.
Presently, Vande Bharat trains have only seating arrangement, these trains are initially slated to replace Shatabdi, Jan Shatabdi and Intercity Express. However, in future there are also plans to replace Rajdhani, Duronto trains with sleeper coaches with Vande Bharat.
During the presentation of Budget 2022, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had proposed to run 400 new Vande Bharat trains over the next three years. At present, the semi high speed train is running on two routes Delhi-Varanasi and Delhi-Katra.
Vande Bharat trains are run without locomotive engines and are powered by a mechanism called Distributed Traction Power Technology which provides electrical power supply to each car in the train set. Due to the fast speed, the train can run at a top speed of 160 kmph in an hour, thereby reducing the travel time by 25 to 45 per cent.
(with agency input)