Indian Railways is working on a sleeper version of the Vande Bharat Express train, which can touch a speed of 220 kmph, 40 kmph more than the speed of the chair car version of the current generation of Vande Bharat trains. Officials said the semi-high speed trains, which have become a major attraction among rail passengers, will be designed to run at a speed of 220 kmph. These trains will be made using aluminum instead of steel like Vande Bharat 2.0, which will reduce the weight of the train, which will increase the speed.
He said that the sleeper version of Vande Bharat trains will have a top speed of 220 kmph, making them India’s fastest train, it will run at a speed of 200 kmph on the tracks. This also means that once on the tracks, the new sleeper Vande Bharat trains will replace the Delhi-Meerut RRTS trains as the fastest train in India. The top speed of RRTS is also 180 kmph.
The current gen Vande Bharat Express has a top speed of 180 kmph, but only 130 kmph due to safety constraints. He said that chair car Vande Bharat Express trains would replace Shatabdi Express in a phased manner, while the sleeper version would be an alternative to Rajdhani Express trains.
Railways has issued tender for 400 Vande Bharat trains and the work will be approved by the end of this month. According to officials, some of these initial trains could also be sleeper versions of indigenously built trains. Four big domestic and foreign companies have come forward for production.
As per the plan, the first 200 Vande Bharat trains will have Shatabdi Express-style seating arrangements and will be designed to travel at a speed of 180 kmph. Officials said that these trains will be made of steel.
In the second phase, 200 Vande Bharat trains will be sleeper and will be made of aluminium. The second edition of the sleeper Vande Bharat trains will run at a maximum speed of 200 kmph. For this, tracks of Delhi-Mumbai, Delhi-Kolkata railways are being repaired, signal systems, bridges are being fixed and fencing is being installed. Work is underway,” said an official.
Apart from this, anti-collision technical armor is being installed on both the rail routes at a cost of Rs 1,800 crore, the official said. Four hundred trains will be produced in the next two years at the ICF in Tamil Nadu’s Chennai, Latur Rail Factory in Maharashtra and Sonepat in Haryana, officials said.
with PTI inputs