NEW DELHI (Metro Rail News): Piyush Goyal chaired Railway Ministry is all set to start the operations of the second ‘Make in India’ Vande Bharat Express on the Delhi-Katra route soon.
The Railway Board has announced that the train operations of the second Train 18 on Delhi-Katra route will begin before the upcoming festival season.
Considering the fact that getting reserved train tickets during the festive period is often challenging, the introduction of the new Vande Bharat Express train service is expected to benefit a lot of passengers who are planning to travel during that time.
According to Railway Board Chairman, Vinod Yadav, the Delhi-Katra route was chosen by the board in a bid to capitalize on the high traffic volume owing to the holy pilgrimage of Mata Vaishno Devi temple.
The upcoming semi-high speed train on Delhi-Katra route is likely to bring down the travel time between both the cities to 8 hours from the current 12 hours.
This is going to be the second such engineless semi-high speed train, offering world-class train facilities to passengers. At present, only one Vande Bharat Express is operational on Indian Railways network, connecting Delhi to Varanasi.
The new Delhi-Katra Vande Bharat Express will depart from the national capital at 6:00 AM and reach Katra at 2:00 PM. On its return journey, the train will depart from Katra the same day at 3:00 PM and reach Delhi at 11:00 PM.
En route, the Vande Bharat Express train will halt at Ludhiana, Ambala Cantt, and Jammu Tawi railway stations. Manufactured under ‘Make in India’ initiative, the train has been equipped with a slew of modern features including automatic doors, bio-vacuum type toilets, comfortable seating, onboard hotspot WiFi for entertainment purposes, GPS based audio-visual passenger information system, LED lighting, etc.
