Train 19: Indian Railway plans to develop sleeper version of Train 18 soon

New Delhi (Urban Transport News): After successful introduction of India's first indigenous engine-less semi high-speed Train 18 (Vande Bharat Express) in the country, Indian Railways is now planning to design and development Train 19 which will be sleeper version of the Train 18 on the line of Rajadhani Express. Explaining the plan Rajesh Agarwal, Member (Rolling Stock), Railway Board said,

Indian  Railways coach maker Integral Coach Factory (ICF) will take up the design, development and production of Train 19, a sleeper version of Train 18, now named as Vande Bharat Express on the lines of Rajadhani Express.

Sharing production updates on other rakes of train 18 he said that the ICF will roll out 40  train sets while fitting with the driver cabin crash guard with aluminium design in place of fibre reinforced plastic (FRP) used now. He further said that some South East Asian and South American nations have evinced interest for import of such coaches. However, it will only be considered after fulfilling the needs of Indian Railways. Vande Bharat Express, the country’s first 'Make in India' engine-less semi-high speed train has recently proved its technical excellence by completing the 1,00,000 kilometers journey mark. As per the data revealed from Indian Railways, despite facing some initial challenges in operation of Vande Bharat Express between New Delhi and Varanasi, not even a single operating service of the train has been cancelled so far. "This year ICF will take up design, development and production of Train 19 sets similar to Rajadhani Express. The last fiscal ICF became the world's largest railway coach manufacturer rolling out 3,262 coaches", said Rajesh Agrawal.

Agrawal hopes that the ICF will touch a production of 4,000 coaches in this fiscal. He explained that about Rs 2,500 crore infrastructure improvement projects are being planned for coach production units of Indian Railways, of which Rs 500 crore are planned to be spent for ICF.

Apart from design and development of new Train 18/Train 19 rakes, ICF has planned to roll out 12 rakes of air conditioned suburban trains. The Rail Coach Factory (RCF) at Lattur in Maharashtra is now getting ready and is likely to be commissioned this year. Earlier, the 60,000th coach, a self-propelled inspection car was flagged off from ICF Chennai by K Venkateswaralu, a senior most retiring employee of ICF.