First trial of high-speed train to be held between Bareilly and Moradabad

Bareilly: The era of high-speed trains is set to dawn in the country with the first

trial

of the Spanish-made

Talgo locomotive

to be conducted between

Bareilly

and Moradabad next month. At this trial, the

train

is expected to cruise at an initial speed of 115 kmph, according to railway officials.

At the next stage of the trials, the train is to be tested at 155 kmph between Mathura and Palwal. Thereafter, it will be run at speeds exceeding 200 kmph between Delhi and Mumbai. According to officials, the locomotive and 16 coaches, manufactured by the builder Talgo in Barcelona,

Spain

, are on their way by ship t India, where they will be off-loaded at Mumbai. They will then be brought by special train to Izzat Nagar railway shed in Bareilly, where they are to reach by the end of April.

“I have been informed that the train, including its coaches, will be parked at Izzat Nagar railway shed, but I am yet to receive confirmation of the exact date in May of the

first

trial between Bareilly and Moradabad,” said Chandra Mohan Jindal, divisional railway manager (DRM), North Eastern Railway, Izzat Nagar. Jindal was in the team of DRMs sent recently to Milan, Italy, on a 15-day tour to get an insight into the functioning of high-speed trains.

The first phase of the trial will be conducted on the 80km-long track between Bareilly and Moradabad in May, during which the train is expected to run successfully at speeds between 110 and 120 kmph. Officials and technical experts are currently busy upgrading the existing tracks on the line to make it ready for the trial run.

“All three phases of the trail are to be conducted under the supervision of experts from Research Design and Standards Organisation (RDSO), who will review the performance of the train on the said track. Once they give a satisfactory performance report, the second trial will be held on the Mathura-Palwal route,” said Northern Railways chief public relations officer (CPRO) Neeraj Sharma, talking to TOI.

“Apart from the opinion of the RDSO experts, a lot will depend on the report of the commissioner of railway safety (CRS),” Sharma added.

Meanwhile, official sources said that right now the condition of tracks on the Bareilly-Moradabad and other routes designated for the trials is fit enough to run the train at speeds between 100 and 200 kmph.

The train is equipped with specially-designed lightweight coaches which are fitted with AC chair car seats, with no provision for sleeper coaches. This is owing to the fact that it runs short distances, where the maximum travel time is not more than 4 hours.