Indian Railways plans to manufacture 640 coaches of the Vande Bharat Express in the next three years

Indian Railways (IR) is planning to manufacture 640 coaches of the country’s first semi-high speed train – Train 18 or the Vande Bharat Express – in the next three years. The production programmes for 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22 include the manufacture of 160, 240 and 240 coaches, respectively, for train sets at the Integral Coach Factory. The Vande Bharat Express is a semi-high speed, fully air conditioned train, with quicker acceleration and contemporary passenger amenities like on-board infotainment and GPS-based passenger information systems, CCTV, automatic sliding doors with retractable coach footsteps and zero-discharge vacuum-based bio-toilets, etc. At present, the train is being operated on the New Delhi-Varanasi and New Delhi-Vaishno Devi-Katra routes.