Kerala will get its first Vande Bharat train, which is all set for launch next week after successfully completing a trial run. This will be the third Vande Bharat for the Southern Railway and, with this, the total number of these semi-high speed trains in the country will be 15, officials said.
The train will travel between Thiruvananthapuram and Kasargod. The railway ministry is yet to share details about the train, including travel time and stops along the route. At present, the Rajdhani is the fastest train between these two stations and takes around nine hours to complete the journey.
“The trial run was held between Thiruvananthapuram and Kasargod on Wednesday. It was successful,” an official from the Southern Railway told News18.
The Vande Bharat reached Kerala on Saturday from Chennai. On Monday, its first trial run took place but it was between Thiruvananthapuram and Kannur. The train completed the journey in seven hours and 10 minutes. On Tuesday, the ministry decided to extend the train to Kasargod and, on Wednesday, a trial run was conducted from Thiruvananthapuram to this station.
The first two Vande Bharat express trains for the Southern Railway were from Chennai. Also, this is the second Vande Bharat announced for the Southern Railway in the last two weeks. The ministry has geared up the production and delivery of Vande Bharat trains in the new financial year. This is the fifth Vande Bharat, which will be launched this month.
On April 1, a Vande Bharat train between Rani Kamalapati and Delhi was inaugurated. On April 8, two sets of trains – Secunderabad-Tirupati and Chennai-Coimbatore – were launched. Last week, the Ajmer-Delhi Cantonment Vande Bharat was flagged off.
At present, five Vande Bharat trains are running from Delhi to Ajmer, Varanasi, Vaishno Devi in Katra, Bhopal and Amb Andaura. Three are running from Mumbai to Gandhinagar, Shirdi and Solapur and two from Chennai to Mysore and Coimbatore.
Vande Bharat trains are also operational on Bilaspur-Nagpur, Howrah-New Jalpaiguri, Secunderabad-Tirupati and Secunderabad-Visakhapatnam routes.
The first Vande Bharat was inaugurated in 2019. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promised that in the 75 weeks of ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’, 75 of these trains will connect every corner of the country.
Despite the geared up delivery and production, however, the ministry is running behind on its target. For the last financial year, the railways had planned 35 Vande Bharat trains but could manage to add only eight.
Last month, the standing committee on the railways asked the ministry to intensify the production of Vande Bharat trains to meet the demand. It also warned the ministry that it may find it difficult to achieve the set target.
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