Indian Railways Floats Tender For Manufacturing 58 More Vande Bharat Trains

After Prime Minister Narendra Modi's announcement in his Independence Day speech that 75 Vande Bharat expresses will be launched in 75 weeks of ‘azadi ka amrit mahotsav’ to connect different parts of the country, Indian Railways has floated a tender for manufacturing 58 more such trains.

The tender has also provision for maintenance contract.

A contract for 44 Vande Bharat rakes was already awarded to Medha Servo earlier and with this, the national transporter aims to roll out 102 Vande Bharat trains by March 2024.

The semi-high speed Vande Bharat Express is a luxurious air-conditioned chair-car service. Designed for speeds of as much as 160 kmph, and examined at 180 kmph, Vande Bharat train sets are self-propelled trains with distributed power system.

Engineless train sets are equipped with faster acceleration and deceleration which result in less journey time.

According to the railways, already tenders have been floated for 44 rakes. The present tender is for 58 rakes of 16 coaches each with the total plan to manufacture 102 rakes by 2024.

The tender will be closed in October this year and the pre-bid meeting with probable bidders will be held in September.

Heralding a brand new period for Indian Railways, Vande Bharat is expected to connect popular tourist and pilgrim spots across the country.

According to the tender, 30 rakes with 16 coaches each will be manufactured at ICF Chennai and 14 rakes with 16 coaches each at MCF Raebareli and RCF Kapurthala.

The first two Vande Bharat trains operating on the Delhi-Varanasi and Delhi-Katra routes have been manufactured at ICF, Chennai.

As a part of the tender for 44 rakes awarded earlier, the primary prototype Vande Bharat rake will probably be manufactured at ICF Chennai by March 2022 and examined extensively by RDSO. Indian Railways hopes to start out placing the brand new Vande Bharat trains into service by the second half of 2022.

The brand new Vande Bharat trains may have a number of enhancements over the prevailing two trains. Some of them are: push again characteristic for reclining seats, emergency home windows for evacuation, safety for underslung tools from floods, four as a substitute of two emergency push buttons per coach, centralised coach monitoring system, bacteria-free AC system, catastrophe lights in case of failure of lights, air flow as much as three hours in case of energy failure, etc.