Indian Railways to start manufacturing of 44 new Semi High-Speed Trains

New Delhi, India (Urban Transport News): The Indian Railways is planning to manufacture 44 new semi high-speed trainsets in line with Vande Bharat Express (Train 18) at their three manufacturing units instead of procuring the same from the outside manufacturers.

Vinod Kumar Yadav, Chairman, Railway Board said that there will be three manufacturing units instead of one, and train sets will be on the rail network within the next three years. Railway Coach Factory, Kapurthala, Modern Coach Factory, Rae Bareilly, and Integral Coach Factory (ICF), Chennai will be the three manufacturing units where the production of new semi high-speed trainsets will be commenced soon. This will help to reduce delays in the rollout of the 44 new Vande Bharat Express trains in the Indian Railways' network.

Vinod Kumar Yadav, Railway Board Chairman said:

A decision was taken some months back that the three manufacturing units of the Railways will manufacture these trains, thereby reducing the time taken to roll them out by one-third. The 44 trains will start running in the next two to three years. Once the tender is finalized, a definite timeline will be made available.

Integral Coach Factory (ICF) informed the Railways in advance that it would take 28 months to bring the prototype rakes into commercial service and an additional 6 months to start the series production and along these lines 78 months to complete the manufacture of 44 trainsets.

Yadav said that these were internal exchanges within the Railways and since the three units are going to manufacture the rakes, the rollout would be faster.

The production of the Vande Bharat train sets or Train 18 has been buried in the discussion even as the first was turned out by ICF in a record year and a half. It was worked at an expense of around Rs 100 crore and has been offering consistent assistance on two routes viz. New Delhi-Varanasi and New Delhi-Katra.