NEW DELHI: In a sequel to the chair-car version of Vande Bharat (VB) trains, the Railway Ministry is working to rollout the latest sleeper class version by January 2024, prior to the announcement of parliamentary elections, a senior official of the railway ministry said. A design of this train has already been prepared and will soon get approvals for test and subsequent serial production, he added.
The Vande Bharat trains are expected to be a big upgrade from the premium Rajdhani Express service. The sleeper class-version of these trains will be run on the routes to cover overnight rail journey like New Delhi-Patna, New Delhi-Lucknow and others.
India’s first and the second semi-high speed Vande Bharat trains have covered a cumulative distance of more than 18 lakh route kms since it started in 2019 till date. The total distance- covered by these two VB trains, is almost equivalent to orbiting the earth 42 times! In next few years, these trains will be able to cover the distances worth orbiting the Earth and the Moon together at least 100 times.
After four years of intensive work and planning, country’s first and the second Vande Bharat trains as electric multiple units at semi-high speed, were flagged off by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2019 on the New Delhi-Varanasi and New Delhi-Katra in J&K routes.
The first VB train was flagged on the New Delhi-Varanasi route and the second one was on New Dehi-Katra route to provide fast rail transportation to these pilgrim cities. The railway ministry is also working towards exporting these trains by 2026 to cover the international markets of South Africa and European countries and rolling out more than 100 VB trains and running them for at least one lakh route kms.
Sources also said that the announcement for rolling out the second lot of 350-400 new Vande Bharat is expected to be part of the next Union Budget 2023-24.
New VB trains to cover overnight rail journey
The Vande Bharat trains are expected to be a big upgrade from the premium Rajdhani Express service. The sleeper class version of these trains will be run on the routes that cover overnight rail journey like New Delhi-Patna, New Delhi-Lucknow and other similar routes.