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Here is a video posted yesterday of the locos coming out of the CLW. This does look like a WAP5 based design.

Vande Sadharan

While I do like the idea of having a non-AC train with upgraded facilities especially for those from humble backgrounds, I wish the railways would have at least carry forwarded the automatic doors in the interest of safety of all the passengers.

We keep seeing a lot of videos every year of people falling out from a moving train or while entraining or detraining a moving train on the platform. While the whole population is not yet ready for AC travel fares, at least passenger safety could have been improved. Automatic closing doors in LHB coaches has already been implemented in Tejas Rajdhani rakes as well as in some Humsafar express trains.

But good to see that slowly but steadily, the country is moving away from non AC train travel. Our country's climate does necessitate AC travel. The coach production notification from railway board for 2023-24 shows only 164 second class 3-tier sleeper coaches while 189 1st AC, 274 2-tier AC, 375 3-tier AC and 2263 3-tier economy coaches are expected to be built in this financial year. Also, I hope they implement automatic closing of doors as much as possible.

Notificaiton link:
https://indianrailways.gov.in/railwa...20Rev%20II.pdf

For coach code reference:
https://indiarailinfo.com/faq/post/1...20(24%20berths)

Above all, no matter how many facilities the Railway provides, travelers should always care for the Railway properties and help the Railway staff in maintaining the coaches up to the mark.

First Vande Sadharan rolled out from ICF Chennai Today, will probably operate between Delhi & Mumbai.

I think the loco's are based on WAP-5 design. I observe in the video above, the loco has a Bo-Bo bogie which is what WAP-5 has compared to Co-Co of WAP-7.

WAP-5 is suited for max 15 coaches. Anything beyond needs WAP-7. By incoporating a WAp-5 based design with Push-Pull will definitely lead to better acceleration with 15+ coach length,

Given the coach composition, if this is the route then it may run as the "MAHARASHTRA SAMPARK KRANTI EXPRESS", which is one of the fastest NON-AC trains on the route.

The 22-coach train has engines on both ends, earning it the name ‘Non-AC Push-Pull Train’. Trials for the train are expected to begin by the end of October.

The train will have a maximum speed of 130 kmph and can accommodate up to 1,800 passengers. The push and pull arrangement with locomotives on either end of the rake will ensure faster acceleration, more or less on a par with Vande Bharat. So expect this to serve as a Guinea pig prior to the intended launch of the Vande Bharat Sleeper on the same route to replace the Rajdhani(s).

New Vande Sadharan Push Pull train on its way to Mumbai. Train will be kept at Wadi Bunder yard before it undergoes trials this week.

I really wonder what is the purpose to introduce Vande Sadharans?

If you see today, majority of the long distance/intercity/overnight expresses are now having more AC coaches than SLs (atleast intercities originating from Mumbai-WR and bound to Gujarat, Delhi, UP, Punjab, Rajasthan, Jammu have more AC-3T than SL).

The 12907/8 MH-SK Express has about 6 SL and 10 AC coaches. The total pax carrying count of this train is around 1,100. If the Railways plan to replace the SK with VS, I wonder what is their intent behind this decision?

The only practical implementation of a Vande Sadharan IMO is to replace Jan-Shatabdis/day-time intercities with high pax count and a travel distance <500 kms(eg - BDTS - Surat Intercity, MMCT - ADI Karnavati, CSTM - Pune Intercities etc). VS should reduce travel time of these intercities to ~6-7 hours one way, thereby making day trips from Tier-2/semi-urban cities to Tier-1 metros possible.
That way, Railways can address over-crowding on short/medium haul routes with high pax density with to and fro day-time trips.

I highly doubt the VS is a test-bed for VB Sleeper. From all the hearsay, VB Sleeper is to be developed/under development on the same platform/mechanicals as VB.
It's similar to LHB Shatabdi and LHB Rajdhani - with the change being the configuration,where as the coach mechanicals, construction, bogies, axles etc are based on the LHB platform itself.

Morover, the VB Sleeper is likely to be launched as a Premium Train, to replace/complement the existing Rajdhani fleet. While the Vande Sadharan is to cater to high-density routes with a not-so-premium offering.

To provide a truly unique travel experience, I'm expecting the Railways to launch a composite VB Sleeper with a 60-40 split of AC and SL. Atleast that's the current configuration of WR trains post LHBfication :)

The coach composition of only SL / GEN classes indicates intended use for overnight journey and contradicts the Jan-Shatabdis/day-time intercities which have 2S / CC classes.


VB Sleeper is stated to be full AC and intended to replace the Rajdhani's which are full AC.

Probably this is an attempt to segregate AC and non-AC trains on high traffic routes like Mumbai - Delhi, where there are already 3 Rajdhani trains (AC) running daily besides other passenger trains with composite classes.

I travelled by Blr-Chn Vande Bharat yesterday. This was my first VB journey. Now that this particular train is an year old, it shows with paint peeling in some places. Overall it's still good compared to the much older Shatabdi/Double decker rakes. The double decker rake needs serious overhaul (travelled in June).

VB reached Chennai Central outer signal /Basin Bridge in 4 hours flat and then waited there atleast 15 minutes for platform clearance. With a little more optimisation, 4 hour BLR - CHN is definitely feasible :thumbs up.

Some unique clicks of the Vande Bharat by Ananthu. He takes really good photos of these giants!

FB page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/5293...0012578342101/

Location: Kerala - Aroor Kumbalam Bridge.








Those shiny discs! :loveit

The push pull train gets a name finally. It will not he called Vande Sadharan but Amrit Bharat express. The first 22 coach train is supposed to run between New Delhi and Patna and will have 15% increased fares than normal express trains.

Link

I happened to travel in the newly launched Bengaluru - Kalaburagi Vande Bharat Express. It took a little over 7 hours to reach Kalaburagi from Yelahanka in Bengaluru. The ride was super smooth, even at 130KMPH. The train was sparsely crowded and the ambience was calm and soothing. I pulled out my laptop, connected to Jio 5G hotspot and got quite a bit of work done. When I wrapped up with my office work, I still had a couple of hours to spend. I took that time to go down the memory lane and produce the following.


It all started a long time ago. It was late into the night by the village’s standards. It looked like everybody had fallen asleep after dinner and some chit chats. The streets were dark and empty. There were no street lights. It was the time when grown up adults didn’t want to venture out, fearing the stillness of the night. The village boys had heard and told a lot of stories filled with ghosts that danced in the corner of a desolate old palatial house. Ghosts that were easily seen by animals of the canine and feline family but rarely by humans. The infrequent wailing of the street dogs seemed to confirm this hypothesis as did the furious growling of cats seemingly in a standoff. The cats were considered to be more courageous of the four legged animals that roamed the streets in night. They never cried but often growled. There was hardly a buzz or noise outside, apart from these humans accustomed animals or an odd flutter of bats, who were just as nocturnal as the ghosts in the boys’ stories.

There was, however, quite a buzz in a small room of not a large house in the village. There was an excitable 18 odd years old boy humming and brimming with excitement in the room. He was about to do something that not many or almost no one had done in his village. He was about to venture into the unknown in the dead of the night. His father would be furious, like the cats, when he found out about the boy’s endeavor. And the father was bound to find out, the boy knew. But this new adventure he was about to embark upon, made the boy oblvious to his father’s fury. He was prepared to get shouted at for it. He was after all about to the explore a whole new world in the cloak of the darkness and stillness of the night like no one else had in the village. Virtually. He was about to connect to the Internet. The buzz that filled his room was coming from a device that’d take him to the Internet. It was the sound of a modem, connecting to the interent. Not just any modem, but a DIALUP MODEM. It was like that famed motorcycle, the Bullet, coming to life when it was fired up with a kick or, as was the typical case, several of them. The bullet made a thump while the modem made the buzz. But they both carried their masters on fascinating adventures. As the connection came alive, he fired up his Yahoo! Messenger and sent a simple ‘Hi’ to his friend in a far away city. They were on holidays from college. The friend responded ‘Hello’ and the boy’s joy had no bounds. He opened a few websites that he had learned about at the college. They all came alive on his computer. Slowly. Very slowly. Like his first train journey that took him to the state’s capital.

The boy had discovered the Internet just a few days back after joining his engineering college earlier in the year. To get an admission into that college he had to go to the state’s capital city, Bengluru, located about 700 odd kilo meters away from his village. Oddly, it was called the counselling although nobody counselled him about anything over there. His father had taken him to the capital in a train which they boarded from a nearby town. That was also when he discovered train journeys. And it was a memory that’d remain etched in his mind. The train arrived quite late than the time displayed on their ticket. And when it arrived, it was filthy like the streets of his village. People, he observed, abandoned their garbage just about anywhere, like in the village, and nobody seemed to mind. Toilets were just a hole in the floor, again like the one in his home back in the village with one important difference though - this one had a door with a latch. But you get the drift.

The train, despite all the shortcomings, did fascinate him. The sheer length of it and the number of people it transported boggled his impressionalbe mind. And the length could be shortened or elongated based on requirement his father explained. This could be done by removing or adding, what his father and others as he discovered later referred in their native tounge as dabbi or in Hindi as dabba. The official name for them was coaches he came to know later. Considering these metal boxes did not coach anyone or anything referring them as dabbi or dabba somehow felt more appropriate to him. His father gave him another fun fact about the trains. They could be merged and demerged as and when needed and their train to Bengaluru was one of those. Half of it would reach Bengaluru and other other half to some other city, the boy was told. Marvelous!

The boy slept that night in the train wondering if they were in the right dabbi that was destined for Bengaluru. He expected to be in Bengaluru when he woke up. That did not happen. He woke up, sat and got bored and asked his father hesitatingly if they were in the right dabbi. His father confirmed they were. The train was just slow, he added. Not just slow, very slow. The boy told himself. After all it had been over 20 hours since they started. It was not running but crawling at a very slow pace. When they
h the trains would continue for a long time to come, just like his relation with the Internet.

Cut to the present day and the boy had grown into a man. A man who had left his little village long back, lived, studied and worked across different parts of the country, let alone the state. He has experienced/witnessed the evolution or transformation of the Internet. From the days of using the dialup modems with speeds of 56Kbps through the landline his father had got installed waiting for months after applying for it, to the handheld wonder called a smartphone that connected the Internet without a wire at speeds of in excess of 560Mbps. The Internet’s journey had truly been transformational and overwhelming. The trains’ journey on the other hand had been underwhelming. He had experienced all the latest trains that were claimed to be greatest and named quite ostensibly like Garib Rath, or ambitiously like Duranto and Shatabdi. Sure, the toilets were no more a hole in the floor and the dabbis were a lot cleaner, but it still felt like they crawled.
Until today, that is. Today the man experienced the newly introduced and ornamentally named train - The Vande Bharat. The train is unlike any other he has experienced. The closing doors, the automatic sliding doors to the coaches, the swanky clean toilets, the table or trays that can act as a table at the seats can be termed worldclass. And then there’s the aspect of speed. It runs smoothly at 130KMPH only because the tracks beneath it don’t allow it go further. And at that speed it doesn’t make you spill your coffee. Marvellous! While, it may not be transformational yet, but it surely feels like the beginning of a transformation.

As he approaches his destination, the boy, a man now wonders if his village and the region where it’s located, ornamentally again, named as Kalyana Karnataka will get some transformation too. Or in other words, when will they get some Kalyana.