Vande Bharat style home-built bullet train soon! India has initiated the development of an indigenous bullet train capable of surpassing speeds of 250 kilometres per hour (kmph), according to a senior government official. This train is expected to outpace all existing trains currently operating on the Indian Railways network.
An official told ET, “It is being built on the Vande Bharat platform that can already clock a maximum speed of 220 kmph.” The designs for this high-speed train are currently being developed at the Indian Railways’ Integral Coach Factory (ICF) located in Chennai.
In the global context, high-speed trains are defined as those capable of traveling at speeds exceeding 250 kmph, such as the French TGV and the Japanese Shinkansen.
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India is currently relying on Japanese technology for the bullet trains that will operate on the Ahmedabad to Mumbai line, which is currently under construction. The Shinkansen E5 series bullet trains, which India plans to deploy on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad route, can reach speeds of up to 320 kmph.
The official mentioned that the primary focus until now has been on enhancing the speed of Indian Railways trains. “The (proposed) variant Vande Bharat trains can now reach from zero to 100 kmph in 52 seconds while the existing bullet trains do this in 54 seconds,” he said.
The Vande Bharat trains, which are indigenously developed, are manufactured by ICF. The made-in-India bullet trains will operate on the recently announced north, south, and east corridors. “The new corridors will be using more Indian tech and domestic manufacturing,” the official added.
These corridors will complement the western corridor, which was developed in collaboration with Japan and utilizes Japanese technology. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is providing a soft loan of approximately Rs 40,000 crore for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail project, with the total project cost exceeding Rs 1.08 lakh crore.
The National High Speed Rail Corp. Ltd (NHSRCL), responsible for implementing India’s first bullet train project, recently announced the completion of 300 km of pier work. The land acquisition process for the entire 508 km stretch was finalized in January.
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