Railways Plans to Manufacture 640 Coaches of Train 18 in Three Years

The government on Wednesday said it plans to manufacture 160, 240 and 240 coaches of Train 18 in 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22, respectively.

The semi-high speed train sets are being manufactured at the Integral Coach Factory (ICF). Two rakes have already been put into service, the government informed the Lok Sabha.

“Train 18 is a Semi High Speed fully air-conditioned Train having quicker acceleration and contemporary passenger amenities like on-board infotainment and GPS based passenger information system, CCTV, automatic sliding doors with retractable coach footsteps and zero discharge vacuum based bio-toilets etc,” Minister of Railways Piyush Goyal said in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha on Wednesday.

Following the success of India’s first semi-high speed train – Vande Bharat – on two routes, the Indian Railways plans to add more such train sets to its network.

At present, Train 18 trains are being operated on New Delhi-Varanasi and New Delhi-Sri Mata Vaishno Devi Katra sectors.

“Train 18 is a Shatabdi-type train of “Semi High Speed” genre offering additional amenities and operational advantages to the passengers. The fare of these trains has, therefore, been fixed higher than that of Shatabdi Trains,” Goyal said.

Earlier in September, reports said the Railways is planning to launch 40 new Vande Bharat Express in the next two years. The train’s tendering process was recently mired in controversy when it was alleged that the process indulged in favouritism and non-transparency.

However, after Railway Minister Piyush Goyal’s intervention, the Railway Board started the new tendering process for resuming the production of Vande Bharat Express trains.

In fact, Chairman Railway Board had said that the delay in the production of Vande Bharat Express is due to change in both technical specifications and for the lack of transparency.

The Vande-Bharat Express includes the in-house design and manufacture, computer modelling and working, etc. Adding up the green footprints, this fully ‘Make in India’ train has regenerative braking system in the coaches which can save up to 30 per cent of electrical energy.

Source: DNA India

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