On Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, through a video link from Ahmedabad, inaugurated three new Vande Bharat trains for Maharashtra, raising the total number of these trains in the state to eleven. The new services will run on the Nagpur-Secunderabad, Kolhapur-Pune, and Pune-Hubballi routes, according to officials.
So far, eight Vande Bharat Express trains have been in operation on different routes across Maharashtra, managed by both the Western Railway and Central Railway.
The Western Railway operates the Vande Bharat trains on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad and Mumbai-Gandhinagar routes. Meanwhile, the Central Railway runs trains on the Mumbai-Madgaon, Mumbai-Solapur, Mumbai-Sainagar Shirdi, Mumbai-Jalna, Nagpur-Raipur, and Nagpur-Bilaspur routes.
Swapnil Nila, the Chief Public Relations Officer of Central Railway, explained that the Vande Bharat trains on the three new routes are the latest 2.0 version of the semi-high-speed trains.
"Central Railway has presented three more Vande Bharat trains with 21 updates to increase the comfort and safety of passengers," Nila said.