Railway Board Chairman VK Yadav has said that the ‘Train-18’ train sets will now be manufactured by not one but all three coach manufacturing units of Indian Railways i.e. Integral Coach Factory in Chennai, Railway Coach Factory in Kapurthala and Modern Coach Factory in Rae Bareilly.
As many as 44 Vande Bharat trains are to be added on the Indian Railways network within the next three years. Yadav was quoted as saying that some months back, it was decided by the national transporter that all three coach production units will manufacture these trains, reducing the time taken to roll out 44 trains by one-third.
The 44 Train 18 services will start operating in the next two to three years. A definite timeline will be made available, once the tender is finalized, Yadav said.
The Integral Coach Factory (ICF), in a letter dated July 14, informed the Railway Board that as per the estimates, it would take a period of 28 months to introduce the prototype rakes into commercial service. Besides, it will take an additional time period of six months to start the series production, as well as subsequently 78 months of time to complete the production of 44 trains. The railway manufacturing unit in Chennai has manufactured the first two Vande Bharat Express trains.
However, according to Yadav, these were internal communications within Indian Railways. Since now it has been decided that the three units of Indian Railways are going to manufacture the Train 18 rakes, the roll out would be faster.