The Indian Railways has amended the Rs 58,000-crore contract for 200 Vande Bharat sleeper trains. Under the new contract, the number of coaches in each train will be increased from 16 currently to 24 while the number of trains have been reduced to 133 from 200 previously, sources told FE.
In March 2023, Russia’s CJSC Transmashholding and Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd (RVNL) were awarded contract to build and maintain 120 Vande Bharat sleeper trains. This number has been brought down to 80 under the new contract.
Similarly, the second lowest bidder — a consortium of government-run Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) and Titagarh Wagons — will build and maintain 53 trains as against 80 trains in the previous contract.
In early September, railways minister Ashwini Vaishnaw unveiled the prototype version of the Vande Bharat sleeper coach at BEML’s facility. The coach will undergo trails over the next few weeks, and the passenger operations are likely to begin in December this year. BEML is making 10 Vande Bharat sleeper trains for the railways with a 16-coach configuration.
The railways is already running behind the schedule to roll out Vande Bharat sleeper trains.
For instance, the first train was supposed to be rolled out by the first quarter of 2024. The source said that the revised contract would not result in any change in the overall cost of the project, and the timeline for the execution of the contract would not be affected as well.
Experts said that the sleeper trains will be used on long-haul routes, and having more coaches per train would bring down the per-unit cost.
“It makes sense to have more coaches on long routes because it can pare the per-unit cost. Assuming that each coach has 80 seats, the railways can roughly carry 600 more passengers per journey. Hence, the overall cost gets distributed to a large pool of passengers. Also, the sleeper trains in India typically have 24 coaches per train,” said Harshit Kapadia, VP (consumer durables, electrical & capital goods) at Elara Securities.
Vande Bharat sleeper version is built for long-distance journeys ranging from 800 to 1,200 kms. As per the original contract, the 16-coach train had a configuration of 11 AC three-tier, four AC two-tier, and one AC first-class coach.
Launched in February 2019, Vande Bharat Express is being targetted to modernise the rail network with three distinct offerings: chair car, sleeper, and metro. Vande Bharat chair car, which is currently into commercial service, is used for intermediate distance whereas Vande Bharat metro will be used for inter-city travel for which the first trial run took place recently.
