Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the country’s sixth semi-high-speed Vande Bharat train – which will run on the Bilaspur (Chattisgarh) – Nagpur (Maharashtra) route – on December 11, an Indian Railways official familiar with the matter said on Sunday. According to the official, the train will run six days a week and complete one leg of the journey in about five and a half hours. “The Bilaspur-Nagpur Vande Bharat train will be inaugurated on Sunday (December 11) by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Nagpur,” an official said.
“This train will leave Bilaspur at around 6.45am and reach Nagpur at around 12.15pm. Similarly, the train will leave Nagpur at 2 PM and reach Bilaspur at 7:35 PM. Currently, superfast trains take about seven hours to reach Nagpur, but this train will cover the distance in about five-and-a-half hours,” the official said.
According to a second official familiar with the matter, the train will be operated by Southeast Central Railways (SECR) and will have scheduled halts at Raipur, Durg and Gondia. The official also said that the next Vande Bharat train is likely to be launched between Secunderabad and Vijayawada in 2023. “It will be the first domestic high-speed rail in South Central Railway (SCR) and the second such train in South India. ” added the official.
The next-generation Vande Bharat train was inaugurated for the first time on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad route in October this year. The railway aims to open 75 Vande Bharat trains by August next year. All semi-express cars are equipped with automatic doors, GPS-based audio-visual passenger information system, on-board Wi-Fi hotspot for entertainment purposes and comfortable seats. However, the first Vande Bharat Express train was decommissioned on 15 February 2019 on the New Delhi–Kanpur–Allahabad–Varanasi route.