The Made-in-India Vande Bharat Express has received an overwhelming response from passengers and is receiving a lot of encouragement from the Ministry of Railways itself. The semi-high speed train itself is a pet project of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has launched the first Vande Bharat Express in India. With so much enthusiasm in the government and passengers, Indian Railways is working to make Vande Bharat trains even more attractive for passengers. Recently, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav confirmed that they are working to launch three variants of Vande Bharat Express soon.
While the current version of the Vande Bharat Express will be the chair car version for travel between cities located within a distance of 150-600 kms, the Vande Bharat Express for cities within a range of 100-150 kms serving as an urban train connectivity network There will also be a metro. And also the sleeper version of the Vande Bharat Express, which covers a distance of over 600 km, replaces the Rajdhani Express in the long run.
Of these, the Indian Railways is working to increase the speed of the Vande Bharat sleeper variant, which can touch a speed of 220 kmph, 40 kmph more than the speed of the chair car variant of the current generation of Vande Bharat trains. In semi-high speed trains, aluminum will be used instead of steel, which will reduce the weight of the train and increase the speed.
While the sleeper version of the Vande Bharat trains will have a top speed of 220 kmph, making them India’s fastest trains, it will run at a speed of 200 kmph on the tracks, a railway official had said earlier. 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 160 kmph (on some sections) due to safety constraints. Railway has issued tender for 400 Vande Bharat trains. According to officials, some of these early 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.
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. The work is underway,” an official told PTI.