BHUBANESWAR: India will roll out its first indigenously designed, developed and manufactured hydrogen-powered train on the next Independence day, Union Minister for Railways, Communication, Electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw said here on Thursday.
Speaking at a program ‘Modi@20-Dreams meet Delivery’ organised at SOA to mark 20 years of leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Vaishnaw said India has been able to build trains which are among the best in the world and the next big thing will be when the hydrogen-powered train is rolled out on August 15, 2023.
A train, built at the Integral Coach Factory (ICF), Chennai, recently is among the best five in the world, he said adding it travelled at a speed of 180 km per hour which amazed the world.“This train is better than all others on multiple parameters and a glass of water kept in the driver’s cabin remains unspilled even when the train moves at maximum speed indicating its stability,” the Railways Minister said.
Referring to the Vande Bharat Express train, he said it took only 52 seconds to move from zero speed to 100 km per hour while the famed bullet train in Japan takes 55 seconds for the same.Although initially railway engineers thought to import the train components from developed countries, Vaishnaw said it was the Prime Minister, who insisted that the train needs to be designed and built in India. Two trains which were introduced in 2019 had performed exceedingly well and the distance they had covered so far would equal 18 journeys round the earth without any major breakdown, he said.
IIT-Madras, the Minister said, is developing the hyper-loop, which he described as the most promising transport. “The biggest factor in transport is friction between the vehicle and air. If you create a vacuum and move the vehicle in that vacuum the energy required for movement would be less and the vehicle can reach a speed of 700 km per hour,” he added.