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A day after it was flagged off by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India’s fastest train Vande Bharat Express (Train 18) broke down. However, the train resumed the schedule on Feb 17, 2019.
What Is It?
200 km from Delhi, Train 18 breaks down after it was being brought back from Varanasi to New Delhi for its first commercial run on Sunday. The brakes of the new train, India’s fastest, jammed in one of the coaches.
The train came to a dead halt, the last coaches of the train 18 started making a rattling sound. After hearing the sound, the suspicious loco pilots decreased the speed for some time. There was smoke that came out and a foul smell was felt in the last four coaches. Soon, the power went out in all the coaches and the engineers restarted the train at 10 kmph.
The Railways Ministry issued a clarification saying, “During the transportation back from Varanasi it was stopped at Chamraula station of National Capital Region, about 18 kms after crossing the Tundla station. There was an issue of communication between the last basic unit of 4 coaches and the rest of the train probably due to some external hit. Thereafter, safety features in the train applied brakes. The train was checked for faults and moved to Delhi.” The statement also clarified that the train has been examined at New Delhi maintenance depot and the defect in communication has been corrected.
The Vande Bharat Express was standing 18 km from Tundla since 6:30 am and the cause of disruption seemed to be a cattle run over. It wasn’t a scheduled commercial run, the commercial operations begin from 17th February. After removing the obstacles, the journey to Delhi resumed around 8:15 am. The train was being moved to Delhi for the first commercial run on Sunday. It is already overbooked beyond capacity and running successfully.