INDIA: The Ministry of Railways has called tenders for the supply and maintenance of a further 200 Vande Bharat Express trainsets, at an estimated cost of Rs130bn, as part of its strategy to update the Indian Railways passenger fleet.
These tenders are intended to support the government’s objective of rolling out 400 quasi-high speed trains by the end of 2024-25, as announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her 2022-23 budget statement on February 1. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has set a target for IR to have 75 Vande Bharat trainsets operating across the country by August 15 2023, to commemorate 75 years of Indian independence.
All-seater trainsets are intended to replace Shatabdi Express and other daytime inter-city services, while a sleeping car variant would replace RajdhaniExpress premium overnight services
Energy efficient trains
The latest tenders cover two builds of 100 energy-efficient trains, described as ‘fourth-generation’ trainsets. These would have lightweight aluminium bodies and be designed to operate at a maximum speed of 200 km/h, compared to 160 km/h for the earlier batches. A supplier information day is to be held on August 23, and bids must be submitted by November 25.
The winning bidders would be expected to enhance existing facilities and develop additional infrastructure at two nominated manufacturing units: the Integral Coach Factory in Chennai and the Rail Coach Naveenikaran Karkhana at Sonipat in Haryana state. The bidders will also be responsible for developing the depots needed to maintain the trains in service.
The specified delivery period is 84 months, with a minimum of 30 trains to be delivered in the first year, 40 in the second and 50 trains from the third year onwards. ‘We expect manufacturers to take around 18-20 months to come up with a prototype before they can start the series production’, an MoR official explained.
Sleeping car trains
In April MoR floated a tender for the design and manufacture of 200 Vande Bharat trainsets with sleeping car interiors for overnight operation, which would be manufactured at ICF and the Marathwada Rail Coach Factory at Latur in Maharashtra. The bidding deadline for that tender has recently been extended to October.
The April tender gave the suppliers an option of proposing either steel or aluminium coaches, whereas the latest tender specifies that the other 200 trains must have lightweight aluminium bodies.
IR has also invited leading rolling stock suppliers to develop a fleet of 100 push-pull sleeping car trains, which would have two end power cars rather than the distributed traction used on the Vande Bharat trainsets. Designed for 200 km/h operation, these trainsets would have articulated trailer cars with aluminium bodies. These trains are expected to be deployed on IR’s premier Delhi – Mumbai and Delhi – Kolkata corridors, which are to be rebuilt and resignalled for 160 km/h and eventually 200 km/h operation.
Ramping up production
IR is already ramping up the production of Vande Bharat trainsets at ICF, which developed the 16-car Train 18 prototype which was put into service on the New Delhi – Kanpur – Allahabad – Varanasi route in February 2019, and a second train later introduced on the Delhi - Mata Vaishno Devi Katra service.
After a lengthy delay, ICF is expected to roll out its third Vande Bharat trainset on August 12. Following intensive field trials on the route between Kota in Rajasthan and Nagda in Madhya Pradesh, the train is expected to be put into regular commercial service in southern India by November.
The third trainset includes a number of advances on the two prototypes, including additional passenger facilities and IR’s flagship Kavach Train Collision Avoidance System. It also has an improved fire detection and suppression system and a centralised monitoring system to control all on-train electrical and air-conditioning equipment.
ICF is currently capable of turning out four or five Vande Bharat trainsets per month, but is scaling up its production capacity and aims to be producing seven or eight trainsets per month by the end of this year, with a long-term target of 10 trains/month. Work is also underway to establish Vande Bharat production lines at the Rail Coach Factory in Kapurthala and the Modern Rail Coach Factory at Raebareilly in order to meet the government’s rapid delivery timescale.
Unprecedented capex
The large tenders for the procurement of new-generation passenger trainsets form part of a government strategy to increasing IR’s capital expenditure to record levels. Spending in the rail sector has increased almost fivefold since 2014, from around Rs500bn to Rs2 450bn per year.
As well as the passenger train tenders, IR has launched a programme to procure nearly 75 000 freight wagons over three years at an estimated cost of Rs270bn. It has also called bids totalling more than Rs1tr for 1 200 electric locomotives rated at 9 000 hp and 800 of 12 000 hp.
According to MoR insiders, the government sees investment in railway infrastructure as a way of supporting the country’s logistics base and driving economic growth. It envisages many spin-off benefits from the increased rail spending in terms of revitalising key industrial sectors and generating jobs for a more aspirational population.
