On Sunday, September 24, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is going to flag off nine Vande Bharat trains, including two on the South Central Railways (SCR). These trains are slated to connect 11 states’ religious and tourist areas.
The new nine Vande Bharat Express Trains are Kerala (Kasaragod-Thiruvanthapuram), Rajasthan (Jaipur-Udaipur), Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu (Vijayawada-Chennai), Tamil Nadu (Tirunelveli-Chennai), Gujarat (Jamnagar-Ahmedabad), Jharkhand and West Bengal (Ranchi-Howrah), Telangana and Karnataka [Secunderabad (Kacheguda)-Bengaluru (Yesvantpur)] and Odisha (Rourkela-Puri, Bihar and West Bengal (Patna-Howrah).
According to an official announcement, the prime minister will use video conferencing to officially launch the Vande Bharat train services.
The nine trains that the prime minister will launch will connect 11 states, including Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Bihar, West Bengal, Kerala, Odisha, Jharkhand, and Gujarat.
According to the reports, these Vande Bharat trains will reduce the travel time among destinations by three hours for the Rourkela-Bhubaneswar-Puri and Kasaragod-Thiruvananthapuram routes; by more than two and a half hours for Hyderabad-Bengaluru; more than two hours for Tirunelveli-Madurai-Chennai; about one hour for Ranchi-Howrah, Patna-Howrah and Jamnagar-Ahmedabad; about half an hour for between Udaipur and Jaipur. The Vijayawada – Chennai Vande Bharat Express which will operate via Renigunta will also provide connectivity to the Tirupati pilgrimage center.
Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw will also be present for the ceremony. “These trains are a step towards realising the prime minister’s vision of improving connectivity across the country and providing world-class facilities to rail passengers,” the official statement released in this case read.
The Indian Railways also plans to introduce a sleeper version of the Vande Bharat and Vande Metro by the end of the fiscal year. According to railway officials, the semi-high-speed train series will also include a non-air-conditioned push-pull version with 22 coaches and a locomotive that will debut in October 2024.
The sleeper version will be available from March 2024. Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Chennai manufactures the coaches for both the sleeper version and the metro.
Preparations for semi-high-speed services on the Patna-Howrah route have already commenced, as has track strengthening on the Patna-Jhajha-Asansol-Burdwan-Howrah main line. According to officials, the new rakes for the Patna-Howrah and Ranchi-Howrah routes will include 25 additional features. The train will travel 535 km in around 6 hours and 30 minutes, making it the fastest direct train between Patna and Kolkata.
On February 15, 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the first Vande Bharat Express on the New Delhi-Varanasi route. The train set, made at Chennai’s Integral Coach Factory, signifies the Make-in-India movement and the engineering abilities of Indians.