South Central Railway (SCR) has plans to develop three modern maintenance depots for the Vande Bharat Express trains — one at Tellapur, second at the upcoming new fourth passenger terminal at Cherlapally and another at Tirupati.
This will be in addition to the existing basic maintenance facilities at Secunderabad, Vijayawada, Kacheguda and Tirupati. About ₹10 crore has been allocated for the maintenance of the VB trains in the latest allocation and this could kick off the civil works, senior officials say. While the Tellapur facility is to be established at a cost of ₹440 crore, Cherlapally facility is estimated to cost about ₹221 crore and it will be about ₹325 crore in Tirupati. These projects are in various stages of approval and are expected to be cleared in stages when more Vande Bharat trains are introduced in this section.
The very first Vande Bharat Express train for the zone was flagged off on January 15 last year towards Visakhapatnam (Train No. 20833/20844) from Secunderabad, which has primary maintenance there and the other end maintenance is at Secunderabad station.
Second VB Express (20701/20702) towards Tirupati began to run from April 8 onwards with primary maintenance at Secunderabad and other end maintenance at Tirupati. Third Vande Bharat Express (20703/20704) was flagged off on September 24 towards Yeshwantpur from Kacheguda and its primary maintenance is at Kacheguda and other end maintenance is attended to at Yeshwantpur.
Fourth Vande Bharat Express (20677/20678) also flagged off on the same day last year is towards Chennai with the primary maintenance at Chennai Central and other end maintenance is attended at Vijayawada. A fifth VB Express (20705/20678) flagged on December 30 has been between Jalna and Mumbai with primary maintenance at Mumbai and other end maintenance at Jalna.
Vande Bharat Express are advanced semi-high-speed trains running at 130 kmph speed with in-built ‘Kavach’ or automatic train protection system, centralised coach monitoring system with remote monitoring and other such features. A maintenance depot is also functional at Moula Ali in addition to the above facilities and an extra facility is being developed at the coaching yard in Hyderabad-Nampally station with the overhead electric line facility in case of any need.
Senior officials pointed out that these 16 or eight-set train sets require meticulous maintenance to ensure smooth functioning and passenger safety. Daily safety examination are currently being carried out at Secunderabad and Kacheguda stations every day for four hours. A weekly trip schedule is also carried out once in a week — Tuesdays for Secunderabad-Tirupati VB Express and Wednesday for Kacheguda-Yeshwantpur VB Express at Moula Ali.
Checking train’s propulsion system, braking mechanisms, and other critical components, passenger amenities and intensive cleaning of coaches are undertaken during maintenance. The staff have been trained at Integral Coach Factory, Chennai; Mumbai Coaching Yard, Shakurbasti Train Depot, etc. for getting training to handle Vande Bharat Express Trains, they added.
