The most modern train is likely to be flagged off by PM Modi who will be in Nagpur on December 11 to inaugurate the Samruddhi Mahamarg
Nagpur: Good news for railway travellers! The South East Central Railway (SECR) will operate the prestigious and most modern Vande Bharat Express train between Nagpur and Bilaspur. Barring Saturday, the train will run on all days of the week. A proposal for a Vande Bharat train was sent to the Railway Board in August, said media reports.
According to reports, its approval has been received from the Railway Board. As soon as the green signal was given, the process of inspection of railway officers of the zone and division started. On Thursday, officials of the Operations, Mechanical, Electrical, Commercial Department kept inspecting the coaching depot. Now the coaching depot will be repaired. Later, separate arrangements will be made for this.
The reports further said that the Vande Bharat is likely to be flagged off by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who will be in Nagpur on December 11 to inaugurate the Samruddhi Mahamarg between Nagpur-Shirdi (520km) and also Maha Metro’s two new sections in the city.
In the Union Budget, it was announced to run 400 new generation Vande Bharat trains in the next three years. So far only signs were being received of the gift zone of this train equipped with modern facilities. Now the Railway Board has given approval. However, at present the officials are refraining from giving any information in this regard. There was also a discussion about this among the team of officers who reached for the inspection, the media reports added.
As per a railway circular on December 1, the Nagpur-Bilaspur Vande Bharat Express will leave Bilaspur at 6.45 am and reach Nagpur at 12.15 pm. On the return journey, it will start at 2.05 pm and reach Bilaspur at 7.35 pm. The train will have stoppages at Raipur, Durg and Gondia. This will be the sixth Vande Bharat Express to run in the country after Delhi-Varanasi, Delhi-Katra, Mumbai-Ahmedabad, Delhi-Chandigarh and Chennai-Mysuru.
The train will cover the 412 km distance between Nagpur-Bilaspur in just 5.30 hours. Currently, all the superfast trains like Rajdhani, Geetanjali, Gyaneshwari and other mail/express trains take over 6-7 hours. The Vande Bharat runs at @130kmph. Of the 412 km distance, 267 km of track between Nagpur and Durg under the Nagpur division of SECR have already been upgraded to run trains at @130kmph.
The Railway Board has already said that a suitable place will be identified to repair two rakes of this train at Bilaspur. Although it will take some time. Before that the repair work will be done in the coaching depot itself. During the inspection, the officials are busy making arrangements as to how the Vande Bharat train will reach inside the depot for testing. A separate setup will be prepared for the repair of this train running on the track without a locomotive engine.
The Vande Bharat train has the capacity of 1,128 passengers and it is developed indigenously. The train has a GPS based passenger information system and has automatic sliding doors. It is equipped with CCTV cameras.
Track ready for 130 kmph speed
Nagpur to Bilaspur has been selected to run this train because the train can run at a speed of 130 kmph on the track between these two stations. Railways was also working on this for the last few years. Approval has also been received from the Safety Commissioner to run the train at this speed between Nagpur and Durg. The track till Bilaspur railway station has been made ready to run at this speed. But the safety commissioner has not yet inspected. Zone will correspond soon for this. After getting the green signal from the Commissioner, the train will be able to run at a speed of 130 km per hour from Nagpur to Bilaspur. Vande Bharat also runs at a speed of about 130 km.
