Basin Bridge Coach Maintenance Depot Will Soon Service Vande Bharat Trains

At the Basin Bridge coaching depot, the Southern Railway has begun constructing dedicated pit lines for maintaining Vande Bharat trains. The six-rake facility will cost Rs 19 crores to build. 

A Chennai-Bengaluru Vande Bharat Express is likely to begin service before 15 August 2023. The route is being considered for the fourth rake's operation. The feasibility study was conducted.

According to official documents, the Railways plans to launch 102 Vande Bharat trains, with 13 rakes earmarked for maintenance at the Chennai (six), Coimbatore (three), Tiruchy (two), and Tiruvananthapuram (two) divisions." reports The New Indian Express. 

The third rake of Vande Bharat, recently introduced by the ICF, is undergoing testing and is anticipated to enter the service between Ahmedabad and Mumbai in November or December. 

There are now two rakes of ICF-made Vande Bharat trains operating on the New Delhi-Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Katra and New Delhi-Varanasi sectors.

The rakes are serviced at New Delhi's Shakurbasti coach depot, part of the Northern Railway. 

At ICF, the fourth rake is currently in the final stages of commissioning and should be completed in two months.

Inaugurating the Vande Bharat train’s new prototype at ICF Chennai on Friday (12 August), Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that a total of 475 Vande Bharat semi-high-speed express trains will be manufactured in the next four years.

The Minister further said 75 such trains would be manufactured before 15 August 2023.

Originally called the Train 18 (since a world-class train that was targeted to be indigenously developed by 2018), Vande Bharat was built from design to development in just 18 months by Integral Coach Factory in Chennai.

In the 2022-23 Union Budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman declared that four hundred new-generation Vande Bharat Trains will be developed and manufactured during the next three years.

Also Read: PM Likely To Flag Off Vande Bharat Express On 30 September From Gandhinagar