India will soon be getting its First Ever High Speed Train which will run at a top speed of 280 km per hour. On September 5, an announcement was made by the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) requesting companies to submit proposals for building 2 High Speed chair-car trains. Before September 19, which was the last date to send the proposal, it was informed that only BEML submitted a bid for taking up the project. Hence, the company will be producing the trains at their plant located in Karnataka.
As per reports, Bengaluru will be manufacturing the two high speed trains that will run along the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail (MAHSR) corridor. The operational speed of the trains is estimated to be 250 km per hour and they might be built at a cost of Rs 200 crore to Rs 250 crore, although we don’t know the exact cost as it hasn’t been revealed yet. It has been informed that the trains would be ready in around 2.5 years. Once the manufacturing completes, the trains will have trials on the Surat-Bilimora section of the MAHSR line.
Initially, Japanese Shinkansen E5 trains were supposed to run on the respective corridor given the high speed requirement but the plan got dropped due to Japan’s high price quotation. This led to the Union Ministry of Railways taking the initiative into building the trains domestically. The First High Speed Train train will be ready around December 2026 as said by U Subba Rao, ICF’s general manager. The MAHSR corridor is around 508 km, which links Mumbai and Ahmedabad with 12 stations, costing around ₹1.1 lakh crore.
The trains will have seven bogies in a 3 + 2 seating layout along with one executive car in a 2 + 2 arrangement, it will have a seating capacity of around 174 passengers. If required later the train may be expanded to have 12 or even 16 bogies as per demand. The speciality of the trains is that they will meet European safety and quality standards as it is expected that a European design consultant would be hired. The standards also pave the way for them to be potentially exported to markets including Southeast Asia as well as Africa.
BEML along with Medha will take up the project work. On one hand, where BEML will develop the carbody structure, on the other, Medha will be in charge of the propulsion system. Medha will also develop the Train Control and Management System (TCMS). Let us inform you that the existing Vande Bharat trains in India are using Medha’s propulsion technology which helps them run at 160 km/h. Once the trials are successfully over, more trains could be ordered for the Mumbai Ahmedabad route. India may further adopt these trains for high speed rail lines of Delhi-Varanasi, Mumbai-Hyderabad, and Bengaluru-Chennai.