Get ready to be wowed by the latest addition to the Vande Bharat stable — the sleeper train version set to be rolled out by February-March 2024. The new batch of trains will not only give passengers a comfortable ride, but also a taste of India’s infrastructural prowess.
Expected to replace the Rajdhani trains in the country, the first prototype of the Vande Bharat sleeper coach is being designed and manufactured by Bengaluru-based Bharat Earth Mover Ltd in collaboration with Chennai-based Integrated Coach Factory.
News18 has gathered exclusive details on the coach and its features that will set it apart from those already plying across the country, as well as the existing Vande Bharat trains, which are chair car versions.
It is learnt that the entire body of Vande Bharat sleeper coaches is made of stainless steel. The train will have a white body with orange stripes as its colour code. Its interior furnishing will be light beige, and every seat will have a mobile and laptop charging point in addition to the ones in the common areas.
The formation of the Vande Bharat sleeper is similar to the present ones but will comprise 16 cars, where one car will be reserved for 1st tier AC, four 2-tier coaches, and eleven 3-tier AC coaches.
“The quality of the seats/berths will be much better, as one of the most important aspects of the Vande Bharat trains, apart from upgrading and safety, is providing a comfortable travelling experience. The seats will also be made at a comfortable height; they will be made of better quality, as will the foam and covering used for the seats,” said a senior Indian Railways official working closely with this project.
“Each time a person rides the train, he/she should be compelled to travel again and again. That’s the experience we are aiming for,” the official added.
An additional feature that the Vande Bharat sleeper trains is expected to have is steps made of a softer material that will help people climb to the upper berths. The present steps or ladders provided in trains are hard and made of steel. Vande Bharat may have those made of a fibre-glass variant.
The first prototype is said to have 22 coaches, and the first version of the sleeper train will have 857 berths, of which around 5% would be reserved for the Indian Railways staff, and the remaining 823 berths would be for the passengers. Three toilets, a mini pantry, reading lamps for every seat, a dressing mirror, mobile stand, and a handrest-cum-coffee table between seats on the lower berth, apart from a centre table, are part of the new design.
In terms of the lighting within the coaches, the plan is to make it uniform and subtle so that even in the darkest times, there will be lighting for movement. The air conditioning will be equally distributed and better temperature-controlled, unlike what is seen in the trains at present.
“If you see in our trains today, the air conditioning will be either extremely cold or warm. An automatic climate-controlled system will be placed in this that will keep the temperature controlled, having measured the outside temperature and adjusting it inside the train,” said the official.
The official indicates that the design of the coaches of this train will be quite ‘desi’ as the passenger load that Indian trains carry is quite unique to the country. The officer explains that India carries more passengers in a train than any other country.
“Even in a normal 15-car train, we will be carrying more passengers than seen in any other country. If you see our coaches, in an AC chair car, there will be an allotted number of seats or berths. In the second AC, you can see the space/area inside the coach shrinks, and it further comes down with the third AC. In the second AC, it comes down further. That is because if the number of seats increases, the space will also reduce. In India, we look for how much more we can carry as part of mass commute. Space allocation and utilisation in the Vande Bharat will be much better,” the officer said.
The sleeper Vande Bharat is also expected to use a better version of the semi-permanent coupler, which will help in smoother braking. There will be no jerks or sudden braking, and the semi-permanent coupler will facilitate that.
To ensure the safety of the passengers travelling on train routes, the Automatic Train Protection (ATP) System called ‘Kavach’ will be part of every train, as seen in the Vande Bharat chair cars.
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