In a first for India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will flag-off 9 Vande Bharat Express, India’s fastest train on September 24, 2023. The semi-high speed train is running on 25 routes currently and with the inauguration, the total routes will reach 34. Every single one of these semi-high speed trains are inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, revealing the importance of these modern and fast trains for the current BJP regime. Among these 9 trains will be the first Saffron coloured Vande Bharat Express as well.
Poll-Bound Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh will get the maximum trains, while South India is expected to get 2 Vande Bharat trains, including the orange-grey new Vande Bharat Express. The 9 routes will be inaugurated after a dry spell of two months ever since the last Vande Bharat train was flagged off by PM Modi in July 2023.
Tentative upcoming Vande Bharat Express routes
Route 1: Indore – Jaipur Vande Bharat Express
Route 2: Jaipur-Udaipur Vande Bharat Express
Route 3: Puri – Rourkela Vande Bharat Express
Route 4: Patna-Howrah Vande Bharat Express
Route 5: Jaipur-Chandigarh Vande Bharat Express
Route 6: Chennai- Tirunelveli Vande Bharat Express
Route 7: Kasaragod – Trivandrum Vande Bharat Express
Route 8: Hyderabad – Bengaluru Vande Bharat Express
Route 9: Jamnagar – Ahmedabad Vande Bharat Express
Vande Bharat Express : Routes
As of now, 25 Vande Bharat Express trains are running across India, covering 50 routes, 25 each up and down. Four of these are in the Northern Zone, 3 in Southern and Central Zones, 2 in Western, West Central and North Western Railway Zones and 1 in South East Central, Eastern, East Coast, South Central, South Eastern, Northeast Frontier, East Central, South Western and North Eastern Railway.
Vande Bharat Express
The project to manufacture indigenous semi-high-speed train sets began in mid-2017, and within 18 months, the ICF Chennai completed Train-18. India’s first semi-high-speed train was renamed Vande Bharat Express in January 2019 to emphasize its made-in-India status. The train achieved a maximum speed of 180 kmph on the Kota-Sawai Madhopur section.
Vande Bharat Express: Saffron Paint
The upcoming Vande Bharat Express trains will get a new Orange-Dark Grey paint scheme as against the current generation of semi-high speed trains with white-blue livery. Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that this Saffron colour is inspired by the ‘Tricolour’. The colour scheme has a larger spread on the train, giving it a more prominent appeal as compared to the current Vande Bharat Express trains, where a blue strip runs at the side of the train.