The Indian Railways has floated a tender for 58 rakes of the new Vande Bharat Express trains. Earlier this year, the Railways had filed a tender for 44 rakes of Vande Bharat. In total, the Railways is targeting that as many as 102 Vande Bharat trains would be ready by 2024.
The project is part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement on this Independence Day that 75 Vande Bharat trains will be launched in 75 weeks which will connect different parts of the country.
The coaches of these trains will be manufactured at the Integral Coach Factory, Chennai; Modern Coach Factory, Rae Bareilly and Rail Coach Factory, Kapurthala.
The closing date for the latest tender of 58 new trains is October 20. A pre-bid meeting would be held on September 21 with the cut-off date for submission of pre-bid queries being September 14.
The tender floated on August 28 has invited bids for the design, development, manufacturing, integration, and testing of traction propulsion electrics for the 58 rakes of Vande Bharat trains.
Currently, only two such Shatabdi-type semi-high speed trains are in operation.
