Vande Bharat Express 2.0

Context:

The Prime Minister has inaugurated the newly upgraded Vande Bharat Express. 

About Vande Bharat 2.0

• The Vande Bharat Express is a semi-high-speed train designed, developed, and built by the Integral Coach Factory (ICF).
• Presently there are only two Vande Bharat trains that are running — Delhi to Varanasi and Delhi to Katra.
• The name may be the same, but this train, the third in the Vande Bharat series, is being dubbed ‘Vande Bharat 2.0’, because of certain upgrades.
• The PM had inaugurated the Vande Bharat when it was first launched in Delhi in 2019.
• The new trainset costs around Rs 115 crore — Rs 15 crore more than the last version.
• The government is planning to develop a total of 400 of these trains in the next three years.

Key Features

• The new train can reach the maximum speed of 160 km per hour in 129 seconds, around 16 seconds faster than the other Vande Bharat trains.
• The current Vande Bharat trains have seating only in two classes — chair car and executive chair car. But Railways is planning to upgrade it.
• The trains have fully sealed gangways for a dust-free environment, modular bio-vacuum toilets, rotating seats in Executive Class, personalized reading lights, automatic entry/exit doors with sliding footsteps, diffused LED lighting, mini pantry, and sensor-based interconnecting doors in each coach.
• They are self-propelled trains that do not require an engine. This feature is called a distributed traction power system.