102 Vande Bharat trains to be operational by 2024

Source: This post is based on the Article “102 Vande Bharat Trains” published in “The Hindu” on 31st August, 2021.

What is the News?

Indian Railways has planned to operate 102 Vande Bharat trains by March 2024.

What is Vande Bharat Train?

1. Vande Bharat is India’s first indigenously built engineless semi-high speed train. Earlier, it was known by the name Train 18.
2. The train has been built by the Integral Coach Factory, Chennai, in a record time of 20 months.
3. The train is a 100% ‘Make in India’ project and is claimed to be built at half the cost of a similar train set that is imported.
4. The train has some unique features such as modern air-conditioned coaches, touch-free automatic doors, GPS-enabled passenger information system, onboard uninterrupted Wi-Fi and Bio Toilets.
5. The maiden run of the Vande Bharat train was inaugurated on the New Delhi-Varanasi route in 2019. 

About 102 New Vande Bharat Trains by 2024:

1. These trains will be manufactured at Integral Coach Factory (Chennai), Modern Coach Factory (Rae Bareilly) and Rail Coach Factory (Kapurthala). 
2. Some of the new features in these trains include four emergency windows for easy evacuation of passengers in case of an emergency; disaster lights in all coaches, more emergency push buttons (four per coach), “pushback arrangement” for better reclining of seats among others.