While the Bullet Train may still take time to become reality, the Centre is now focusing on running trains at the speed of 160 km per hour between Delhi and Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata over the next two years. Since there is no separate Rail Budget this year, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley may announce this mega project worth Rs 22,000 crore in the Union Budget.
At present only Gatiman Express can attain the speed of 160 km/hour, covering the 188 km distance between Delhi and Agra in one hour 40 minutes. The new trains on Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Kolkata tracks will be second such sets of fast train introduced by
the Narendra Modi Government. Nine 160 kmph corridors are already scheduled for introduction by 2019 for which feasibility study is being conducted.
Currently, Kolkata Rajdhani takes over 19 hours at an average speed of less than 90 km to cover 1,500 km, and Mumbai Rajdhani takes 16 hours to cover a distance of about 1,400 km at an average of 88 kmph. It is expected that travel time will be reduced by 4-5 hours when the new trains are introduced.
The Railways presently does not have any classified high-speed rail (HSR) corridors, which support operational speeds in the excess of 200 km/h. The nine proposed semi-high-speed corridors (160kmps speed) are Delhi-Agra, Delhi-Chandigarh, Delhi-Kanpur, Nagpur-Bilaspur, Mysore-Bengaluru-Chennai, Mumbai-Goa, Mumbai-Ahmedabad, Chennai-Hyderabad and Nagpur-Secunderabad.
“The Indian Railways aims to increase the speed of passenger trains to 160-200 km/h on dedicated conventional tracks.
It intends to improve their existing conventional lines to handle speeds of up to 160 km/h, with a goal of speeds above 200 km/h on new tracks with improved technology. In the near future, only two identified corridors from Delhi to Mumbai and Kolkata are practically possible and it will be ready in two-year time. The average time of Rajdhani and other capable Express trains on both the routes will save up to three hours,” said a Railways official.
The two important corridors require only certain technological enhancement like track strengthening, modern signaling, train protection warning system and fencing at important stretches. This is being given priority now because Bullet Train, even if everything goes on track, will take another five years, while other nine proposed high speed corridors will also take time.
During the trial-run, Spain’s Talgo trains, which clocked an average speed of 117.5 kmph, can reach a peak speed of 150 kmph on Delhi-Mumbai route, observing laid-down speed cautions and halting at the usual stoppages just as the Mumbai Rajdhani.
In other major decision, the Railway Ministry has advanced the 10-year deadline to three years for providing safe coaches by altering and retrofitting the existing old train coaches of less than 20 years following a series of derailments leading to human loss recently.
This means the country’s first Integral Coach Factory (ICF) Kapurthala in Punjab will have to discontinue the manufacturing of its stereotypical model Coaches. “During the next three years, all these 53,000 coaches will be converted into lHB (linked Hofmann Busch) type coaches, which are fare safer in case of accidents or derailments.
“The ICF will stop manufacturing the present coaches and thereafter only lHB type coaches will be made at Kapurthala,” said a senior Railway official.
A day after the tragic derailment of Indore-Patna Express near Kanpur, the Railways decided not to run new trains on certain over-saturated routes before decongesting the section with capacity augmentation. It has been decided to go for retrofitting of all old conventional coaches with enhanced safety features of anti-climbing technology, like the ones in the lHB coaches to be completed in 10 years of time. “Now this will be done by 2020 and India will have safe train coaches,” added the official.