More than 370 passengers travelled on board the new upgraded Vande Bharat 2.0 train between Ahmedabad and Mumbai during its inaugural journey on Friday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi flagged off the semi-high speed train from Gandhinagar Capital railway station around 10.30 am. Among its first passengers were railway enthusiasts and YouTubers besides railway officials, security personnel and media persons.
The passengers were excited to be part of the train's inaugural run and clicked photos as well as shot videos on mobile phones during the journey. As the train streaked by, passengers at various stations along the route, railway employees working on the adjoining tracks and passers-by on the roads and people in the buildings along the tracks were also seen clicking pictures or shooting videos.
Vacuum toilets like those seen at airports, spacious and rotating seats in the executive chair car class, the passenger addressing system, wide windows and end-to-end gangway were some of the most appreciated features of the new train.
The train, which connects the capital cities of Maharashtra and Gujarat, is the third Vande Bharat Express. The first such train was started on New Delhi-Varanasi route, while the second one was started on New Delhi-Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Katra route.
On the occasion Modi also met the people, engineers involved in the making of Vande Bharat trains being manufactured at Chennai based Integral Coach Factory (ICF). “It is a matter of obvious happiness for me that more than three years after the first Vande Bharat/Train 18 came into service, the third Vande Bharat has been inaugurated by the Prime Minister himself, just like he did for the first train in Februrary 2019. The first version of the train was built by the ICF in 2018 and the design, engineering and construction was done entirely in India for the first time. This is next version,” said former General Manager ICF Sudhanshu Mani during who’s tenure the train sets were conceptualized and also first train rolled on.
The acceleration of the train has been increased and some facilities like seats or passenger information system have been improved but the common passenger will get a feel of this train like the first and second Vande Bharat.
“One important issue, though. A lot of expectation has been built up by comparing the train with Bullet train in respect of acceleration. The final time table of 5 hours 45 min between Ahmedabad and Mumbai is a disappointment as it barely excels the existing Tejas and Shatabdi trains at average speed of 86 kmph. It was expected that Ahmedabad-Mumbai would be covered in less than five hours with an average speed of little over 100 kmph as against the already established 96 kmph of the first Delhi-Varanasi Vande Bharat,” Mani said.