Prime Minister Narendra Modi will flag off nine Vande Bharat trains on September 24 via video conferencing.
The new trains to be flagged off are the Udaipur–Jaipur Vande Bharat Express; Tirunelveli-Madurai-Chennai Vande Bharat Express; Hyderabad–Bengaluru Vande Bharat Express; Vijayawada–Chennai (via Renigunta) Vande Bharat Express; Patna–Howrah Vande Bharat Express; Kasaragod-Thiruvananthapuram Vande Bharat Express; Rourkela-Bhubaneswar–Puri Vande Bharat Express; Ranchi–Howrah Vande Bharat Express, and the Jamnagar-Ahmedabad Vande Bharat Express.
Also read: TN’s first intra-state Vande Bharat train service flagged off
The nine trains will boost connectivity across 11 states, namely, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Bihar, West Bengal, Kerala, Odisha, Jharkhand and Gujarat, a government statement said.
On the Rourkela-Bhubaneswar–Puri and Tirunelveli-Madurai-Chennai routes, the focus will be on connecting “important religious towns of Puri and Madurai”.
Also, the Vijayawada–Chennai Vande Bharat Express will operate via the Renigunta route and will provide connectivity to Tirupati, said Railway officials.
The Vande Bharat trains will be the fastest trains on their routes of operation and will save considerable time for passengers, the statement further added.
Also read: The making of Vande Bharat trains
The Vande Bharat Express trains are faster than the fastest trains on the Rourkela-Bhubaneswar–Puri and the Kasaragod-Thiruvananthapuram routesby about 3 hours; on the Hyderabad–Bengaluru route by more than 2.5 hours; on the Tirunelveli-Madurai- Chennai route by more than 2 hours; Ranchi–Howrah, Patna–Howrah and Jamnagar-Ahmedabad routes by about 1 hour; and on the Udaipur-Jaipur route by about half-an-hour.
The first Vande Bharat Express, in orange colour, will run on the Kasaragod-Trivandrum route. Railways officials said 10 more orange colour scheme Vande Bharat trains are in the works.
The other eight Vande Bharat trains to be flagged off tomorrow are in the traditional blue-white colour combination.
Currently, there are 25 Vande Bharat trains operational across the country.