Soon: Vande Bharat Trains Connecting Mangaluru With Bengaluru, Chennai And Hyderabad

Vande Bharat Express will be soon introduced on Bengaluru-Mangaluru, Mangaluru-Chennai and Mangaluru-Hyderabad routes, Railways Minister Piyush Goyal has said, according to a Times of India report.

“It is one-of-a-kind high-speed train and is developed with indigenous technology,” said Goyal. “An automatic signalling system will also be installed on the routes,” he added.

On 15 February, Prime Minister Narendra Modi flagged off the first semi-high speed engine-less Vande Bharat Express (T18) between New Delhi and Varanasi. The train is equipped with GPS passenger information system, CCTV cameras and talkback facility units to connect with the driver in case of an emergency.

The ‘Made in India’ Train-18 or the Vande Bharat Express was launched on Friday (15 February) by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi. However, the train developed a technical issue while returning from Varanasi on Saturday (16 February) morning.

Railways claimed that the issue was small and has been fixed since then. However, the ICF said, “the train is a prototype and may have a teething problem initially.”

Train-18 was successfully run at 180 kmph during trials. It was conceptualised and produced in 18 months by Chennai’s ICF. Currently, it has been permitted to run at 130 kmph due to safety reasons.