(LiveMint)
Indian Railways is planning to manufacture about 640 coaches of country’s first semi-high speed train, the ‘Train 18’ later rechristened as Vande Bharat Express, in the next three years. This information was given by Minister of Railways and Commerce & Industry, Piyush Goyal in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha on Wednesday.
The production programmes for 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22 include the manufacture of 160, 240 and 240 coaches respectively for train sets at Integral Coach Factory (ICF). Two rakes have already been put into service.Train 18 is a semi high speed, fully air conditioned train, having quicker acceleration and contemporary passenger amenities like onboard infotainment and GPS based passenger information system, CCTV, automatic sliding doors with retractable coach footsteps and zero discharge vacuum-based bio-toilets etc.
