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200 KM/Hour Trains in the Offing

  • The India Railways is set to take a giant leap in realising the dream of high speed trains. In the forthcoming Budget, the Railway Ministry is expected to announce its decision to increase the speed of over half a dozen trains to up to a maximum of 200 kilometre per hour.Presently, the Bhopal Shatabdi train between New Delhi and MP’s capital is the fastest train. It touches the maximum speed of 150 km per hour at one point between Delhi and Agra.
  • “The proposal is being seriously considered. Minister Dinesh Trivedi is particularly interested in this project. Trains and routes are being finalised and a formal announcement could be expected in the Rail Budget,” a senior Railway official attached to Trivedi told The Pioneer.To run the trains at that speed in different locations of the country, the Railways would require significant investment to change existing the track and signaling system. The track should be strong enough to absorb vibration that would emanate from a train running at the speed of 200 km per hour.
  • “We would require such error-free signaling system that even two trains at such a speed can operate in a section. It is like airport system, wherein the old practice of allowing a landing only 15-20 minutes gap has been done away with new alternatives that provide landings at the gap of say 2 or 3 minutes,” official said.
  • In the last Budget, pre-feasibility studies for running high speed trains were ordered in six corridors of Indian Railways including Delhi-Chandigarh-Amritsar (450 km), Pune-Mumbai-Ahmedabad (650 km), Hyderabad-Dornakal-Vijaywada-Chennai (664 km), Chennai-Bangalore-Coimbatore-Ernakulam-Thiruvananthapuram (850 km), Howrah-Haldia (135 km) and Delhi -Agra-Lucknow-Varanasi-Patna (991 km). Some of these have been completed while the process is on for some others.Similarly, some new initiatives in border areas are also expected to be announced as Railway projects, which are funded by the Finance Ministry and not the Railway Ministry.
  • “Usually, new lines are declared as national projects. But there is no prohibition in declaring some other projects as national if there is an agreement between the Railway Ministry, Finance Ministry and the Planning Commission,” Railways said. 3West Bengal and North East are expected to be the biggest beneficiary of this announcement, with sources claiming that Railways want most of the new lines in this region to be declared as a national project.

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