India Built the First Vande Bharat Train in 18 Months for About ₹97 Crore. The Ministry Now Counts 162 Services.

Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told the Lok Sabha on 22 July 2026 that 162 Vande Bharat services are running. The ministry counts each direction of a route as a service. In February 2026 it described 164 services on 82 routes, so 162 is about 81 pairs.

The first set took the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Chennai 18 months to build and, by The Week’s account, cost ₹97 crore (970 million rupees). It was flagged off from New Delhi by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 15 February 2019.

Eighteen months and about ₹97 crore

The project was known as Train 18. The Press Information Bureau (PIB), the government’s press arm, said in February 2019 that ICF had done the design, the computer modelling and the manufacture in-house, working with many suppliers on putting the systems together, in 18 months. The set had 16 air-conditioned coaches, two of them executive class, and 1,128 seats. It was timed at eight hours from New Delhi to Varanasi and ran every day except Monday and Thursday. Swarajya reports that paying passengers began riding on 17 February 2019.

The 2019 releases give no price for the first set. The Week puts it at ₹97 crore, and Swarajya reported an estimated ₹98 crore in October 2018. Spread over 16 coaches, that is about ₹6.1 crore a coach. In a Rajya Sabha reply on 23 December 2022, Vaishnaw gave an average of about ₹6.6 crore a coach for Vande Bharat trains, against ₹8 crore (in 2019) for metro coaches of a similar kind.

Claims about the saving over imports differ. The PIB said in 2019 that the train cost less than half of global prices, without naming a comparison train. The Week says it cost nearly a third of an imported train’s estimated price. By 28 July 2023, when 50 services were running, the ministry told the Lok Sabha that ₹1,343.72 crore had been used to manufacture Vande Bharat trains.

No engine at the front

Nothing hauls a Vande Bharat. The PIB said in 2019 that all the electrical equipment sits under the coaches, which is why a 16-coach set seats more than a conventional Shatabdi rake of the same length. Swarajya describes the arrangement as a distributed power system, and Rolling Stock World says half the cars are powered. Regenerative braking, which feeds power back into the overhead wire as the train slows, can save up to 30 percent of electrical energy, according to the 2019 release.

Such a train needs wires over every kilometre it runs, which is what the electrification drive supplied. The PIB’s January 2026 explainer says ICF builds the sets with around 90 percent local content. It does not list which parts make up the other tenth. Rolling Stock World reports that one 2026 set, built at the Modern Coach Factory in Raebareli, carries electrical equipment from Siemens Mobility.

160 km/h on paper, less on the track

The design speed of the first sets is 160 km/h. Vande Bharat 2.0, first flagged off on 30 September 2022, weighs about 392 tonnes against 430 and is designed for 180 km/h, with an operating speed of 160 km/h “subject to route readiness”, the explainer says.

In the Rajya Sabha on 23 December 2022 the ministry said the trains were attaining up to 130 km/h, the maximum permitted on each section. An RTI reply reported by PTI in June 2024 put the average speed at 84.48 km/h in 2020-21, 81.38 in 2022-23 and 76.25 in 2023-24. Railway officials told PTI that works under way and hard terrain explain part of the fall, and that the full 160 km/h is reached only on stretches between Delhi and Agra that were prepared in 2016 for the Gatimaan Express. The applicant, Chandra Shekhar Gaur of Madhya Pradesh, said the data showed the speed falling.

The acceleration claim has moved between versions. The PIB said in September 2022 that Vande Bharat 2 reaches 100 km/h from a standstill in 52 seconds. The January 2026 explainer gives the same 52 seconds for version 3.0.

Services, riders and seats

The ministry’s count of services was 50 on 28 July 2023. The explainer gives 164 by December 2025, and the AIR report of the Lok Sabha reply gives 162 in July 2026. None of the pages reviewed explains the difference of two. Rolling Stock World counts 100 passenger trainsets built by the end of 2025, 96 of them at ICF, so services and physical trains are not the same number.

The explainer says the 164 services covered 274 districts and had carried more than 7.5 crore (75 million) passengers. It puts occupancy at 102.01 percent in 2024-25 and 105.03 percent in 2025-26 up to June 2025, and does not say how occupancy above 100 is calculated.

The stated goal is about 800 trainsets by 2030 and 4,500 by 2047, “subject to infrastructure readiness and manufacturing capacity”. The orders Rolling Stock World lists for 2026 to 2030 are 88 seating trains plus 208 to 210 sleepers, which add up to about 300.

The sleeper

The sleeper trainset has 16 coaches: 11 three-tier AC, four two-tier AC and one first AC, with a capacity of about 823 passengers. Trials reached 180 km/h on the Kota to Nagda section before launch, the explainer says. Modi flagged off the first service from Malda Town on 17 January 2026, between Howrah and Guwahati (Kamakhya). The PIB expects it to cut the travel time by about 2.5 hours from the 17 hours the Saraighat Express takes. Indicative fares are ₹2,300 in 3AC, ₹3,000 in 2AC and ₹3,600 in first AC, with meals included. The AIR report of the July 2026 reply says regular operation began in January. Only the Howrah to Kamakhya route appears in the releases reviewed here.

Three builders hold the sleeper contracts, according to Rolling Stock World. BEML builds 10 trains at Bengaluru on ICF technology; the first two have run since January 2026. Kinet Railway Solutions, a joint venture of Rail Vikas Nigam and TMH, has 120, and a Titagarh and BHEL consortium has 80, with its first set due by the end of 2027. The same report says Vaishnaw stated in April 2026 that 12 sleepers would be in service by the end of the year.

Who builds the seating trains

ICF built 96 of the 100 passenger sets finished by the end of 2025, Rolling Stock World reports. Production began at the Rail Coach Factory in Kapurthala and the Modern Coach Factory in Raebareli in spring 2026. Under the new plan, ICF is to make 720 of the 1,500 cars in 88 trains, Kapurthala 336 and Raebareli 444. All three are Indian Railways’ own factories. ICF also fitted the sets for the Kashmir line to run at minus 20 degrees.

A 2022 tender for 100 aluminium-bodied sleeper trains would have brought a foreign builder onto the platform. Alstom was the lowest bidder, the tender committee judged the bid excessive, and the order was cancelled, the report says. The sources reviewed name no private maker of the seating trains.

Cattle and the nose cone

The Mumbai Central to Gandhinagar train, flagged off on 30 September 2022, hit buffaloes near Ahmedabad on 6 October. Western Railway said the nose cone, made of fibre-reinforced plastic, is designed to absorb the impact and be replaced, and that it keeps spares. The cone was changed in Mumbai and the train ran the next day. By 2 December the same train had struck cattle four times, Western Railway said, and it announced stainless steel fences 1.5 metres high along 620 km of the Mumbai to Ahmedabad route, at an expected ₹264 crore.

The reports reviewed describe no redesign of the nose. The railway’s remedy was to keep animals off the track.

The critics, by name

Sudhanshu Mani headed ICF when Train 18 was built. Speaking to The Week in April 2026, he said he does not consider the train world-class, that it trails Chinese and European trains, and that high-end trains should be run privately without subsidy. He called the vigilance cases brought against his team false and said they were dismissed. A Tribune column by Rajesh Ramachandran in June 2023 said 26 officers of the team were charge-sheeted by the Railway Board’s vigilance department and later cleared by the Central Vigilance Commission. Neither piece cites the commission’s order.

Trinamool Congress MP Saket Gokhale said in September 2024 that the sleeper contract rose from ₹290 crore to ₹436 crore a train. The ministry replied that coaches per train went from 16 to 24, that 200 trains of 16 coaches and 133 trains of 24 coaches each total about 3,200 coaches, and that the cost per coach fell.

On occupancy, PTI reported in July 2023 that Bhopal to Indore ran at 29 percent and Indore to Bhopal at 21 percent at the end of June, on a three-hour trip costing ₹950 in AC chair car. PTI’s sources said the railway was reviewing fares on such short routes, and a senior official said most Vande Bharat trains were running full. In February 2026 Vaishnaw told the Lok Sabha that Vande Bharat fares are kept below the cost of service, a gap our piece on how the railway pays its way covers for the whole passenger network. He gave the AC chair car fare on a 300 to 400 km trip as about ₹2.19 a kilometre, against ₹7 to ₹20 in China, Japan and France.