Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Saturday visited the Integral Coach Factory and inspected the manufacturing of Vande Bharat trains. The semi-high-speed Vande Bharat train rakes have been given a new look with a combination of orange, grey,and white colour in front instead of the present blue and white colour. Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw along with senior officials of the ICF, took stock of the production of the latest new-generation high-speed trains and went around the sprawling campus. “25 improvements have been done in Vande Bharat. Whatever feedback we are receiving from the field unit we are including that in the improvement,” said Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.
In a press briefing the Railway Minister said –“This is a concept of Make In India, (which means) designed in India, by our own engineers, and technicians. So whatever feedback we are receiving from the field units, regarding ACs, toilets, etc., during the operation of Vande Bharat, all those improvements are being used for making changes in the design.” “A new safety feature, ‘anti climbers’, or anti-climbing devices, on which we are working, were also reviewed today. These will be standard features in all the Vande Bharat and other trains,” he further said. During the interaction with Media Persons he said that he was glad to see the improvements made in Vande Bharat and that he has inspected about 25 safety and technical improvement features which has been implemented in the next Vande Bharat Express that is under production such as increase in seat reclining angle, better cushion for seats, better accessibility to mobile-charging points than before, extended foot rest in the Executive Chair Cars, Wash Basin with increased depth to avoid splashing of water, better lighting in toilets, provision of fixing points for wheel chairs used by Divyangjan passengers in the driving trailer coaches, change of reading lamp touching from resistive touch to capacitive touch for easy use, better roller blind fabric and anti-climbing device in the Vande Bharat Express as well as other trains for improved safety.
Vaishnaw further stated that The process of production of Vande Bharat Sleeper Version as well as the Vande Metro Coaches are going in very good phase, he added. To cater to the comfortable and safe travel of the lower sections of passengers, Railways are taking up the important project of manufacture of coaches with advanced features that will cater to the unreserved and general class of passengers.
