Railways conducts trial run of India’s fastest train

Amit Khajuria

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Tribune News Service

Jammu, July 23

The fastest train with the highest seating capacity is all set to be launched on the Mata Vaishno Devi, Katra-New Delhi route in August.

The Northern Railways successfully conducted a trial run of India’s fastest train ‘Vande Bharat Express’ on Monday.

‘Train-18’ will be a 16-coach air-conditioned train with two classes of tickets: Executive and chair car, with a capacity of around 1,100 passengers.

Sources in the Railways informed The Tribune that the department had almost completed its work and now the ministry had to take a call for its inauguration.

“The Railways has conducted a successful trial run of the train. Now the after-trial report is pending which will be submitted by next week. The department’s role for pre-launch of the train is till the after-trial report. Now, the ministry has to take a call for the date of inauguration,” a senior official said, requesting anonymity.

According to the sources, the Railways is seeking the schedule of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to flag off the train.

During the trial run, the train attained a speed of130 km/h and cut down the travelling time from Delhi to Katra by over four hours.

The train left New Delhi at 6 am on Monday and reached Katra at 3 pm. It reached Jammu Tawi railway station at 12.38 pm and left at 12.40 pm. Currently, a superfast train takes about 12 hours to cover this distance.

Another new thing about this train is that this will be the only chair car train for Jammu and Kashmir, which will have two classes of tickets. The train is expected to run during the day for only three days in a week.