Second Vande Bharat Express train reaches Mumbai ahead of Feb 10 flag off

The second Vande Bharat Express rake has reached Mumbai, ahead of the flag off by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on February 10, 2023.

The semi-high speed train will be inaugurated on Mumbai-Shirdi and Mumbai-Solapur routes becoming India's 9th and 10th Vande Bharat trains.

One of the two new Vande Bharat Express trains recently reached Mumbai ahead of the flag off by the PM Modi, who will be launching the trains at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) next week, on February 10.

Now the second train has reached Mumbai and the video has been shared by the Ministry of Railways on Twitter.

The train reached Mumbai from the Chennai-based Integral Coach Factory, without testing, unlike the first rake, that went on trials in the ghat (hilly) sections on the outskirts of Mumbai to test its parking brakes before its maiden run on February 10.

For the first time, a train successfully climbed both the steepest western ghat mountain sections of Bhor Ghat (Khandala on Pune line) and Thull Ghat (Kasara on Nashik line) without banker engines.

The Vande Bharat Express between Mumbai and Solapur is likely to run through the Bhor ghat (located between Karjat and Khandala on the way to Pune) and is expected to cover the distance of around 455 km in 6.35 hours.

The Mumbai-Shirdi train is expected to run through the Thal ghat (in Kasara area near Mumbai) and cover the distance of 340 km in 5.25 hours.

With a gradient of 1:37 (for every 37-metre run there is a rise of 1 metre), both Bhor and Thal ghats are among the toughest Railway ghat sections in the county, officials said.

Additional locomotives, called 'bankers', are used for pushing trains from behind from the Mumbai side in the ghat sections to prevent them from rolling back.

But the process of attaching and later detaching bankers takes at least a few minutes increasing the travel time, an official explained.

The Vande Bharat trains on both the routes will be run without attaching bankers. Instead, they will have parking brakes which will stop the train from rolling down on gradient. 

So far, eight Vande Bharat Express trains have been launched on various inter-state routes, including one between Mumbai and Gandhinagar.