Indian Railways manufacture high speed engine @ 180 km/hour

Indian Railways has manufactured high speed locomotive touching a speed of 180 km per hour. The engine was developed under the ‘Make in India’ initiative in West Bengal’s Chittaranjan Locomotive Works. This was shared by railway minister Piyush Goyal on microblogging site Twitter.

“Railways has manufactured a high speed locomotive in West Bengal’s Chittaranjan Locomotive Works, achieving a top speed of 180km/hr. This new locomotive produced under ‘Make In India’ initiative, will speed up trains like never before.

Railways has manufactured a high speed locomotive in West Bengal’s Chittaranjan Locomotive Works, achieving a top speed of 180km/hr.

This new locomotive produced under ‘Make In India’ initiative, will speed up trains like never before.

India’s fastest train, Vande Bharat Express or Train 18, hit 180 kmph during its trial run on February 1. The train has been manufactured by Integral Coach Factory, Chennai, under the ‘Make in India’ initiative and is the country’s first engineless train. It is expected to replace the Shatabdi trains and runs between Delhi and Varanasi.

Following the success of India’s first semi-high speed train Train 18, the Indian Railways is also planning to add more such train sets to its network. The Union Ministry of Railways has been holding important consultations in this regard with key train set manufacturers. 

With a view to increasing speed of trains in Indian Railways, ‘Mission Raftaar’ was announced in the Railway Budget 2016-17.  The mission envisages a target of doubling of the average speed of freight trains and increasing the average speed of all non-suburban passenger trains by 25 kmph in the next five years. Increasing the speed will ensure upto 60 per cent increase in the average speed of passenger trains and the doubling of an average speed of freight traffic.

(With agency inputs)