An official said the low allotment for this year's work was possibly because the railways were in the process of buying 15 train sets, at a cost of Rs2,952 crore, for Shatabdi and Rajdhani routes. dna had front-paged this acquisition in its March 20 edition.
The railway ministry has allotted a measly Rs1,000 this year to herald the beginning of the nation's quest to manufacture a train capable of running at a top speed of 200kmph.
On March 2 this year, railway minister of state Manoj Sinha had announced in the Parliament, the sanctioning of a plan to upgrade a Linke Hofmann Busch (LHB) rake to semi-high-speed status, with a top speed of 200kmph. The job was entrusted to the Rail Coach Factory in Kapurthala and the total sanctioned cost was Rs25 crore.
An official said the low allotment for this year's work was possibly because the railways were in the process of buying 15 train sets, at a cost of Rs2,952 crore, for Shatabdi and Rajdhani routes. dna had front-paged this acquisition in its March 20 edition.
"Some of these train sets were bought off the shelf and will be run on nine identified sectors, to be upgraded to semi-high speed rail lines. May be that's why the railways are going slow on its Make in India policy, when it comes to constructing its own 200kmph rake. It also allows the railways to have a look at varied technologies, before building a rake domestically," said an official.
The other reason, some officials pointed out, could be that feasibility work on all nine sectors to upgrade them to speeds of between 160-200kmph is still on and allotting resources immediately for a rake would be a bit premature. The nine sectors identified by the railways are Delhi-Agra, Delhi-Chandigarh, Delhi-Kanpur, Nagpur-Bilaspur, Mysore-Bengaluru-Chennai, Mumbai-Goa, Mumbai-Ahmedabad, Chennai-Hyderabad and Nagpur-Secunderabad.
Meanwhile, an official said, "It is good that the railways are thinking of semi-high-speed trains, which might be of more use in the long run on heavily patronised shorter routes than the so-called bullet trains, which are several times costlier than the semi-high-speed networks."
9 semi-high speed sectors:
Delhi-Agra
Delhi-Chandigarh
Delhi-Kanpur
Nagpur-Bilaspur
Mysore-Bengaluru-Chennai
Mumbai-Goa
Mumbai-Ahmedabad
Chennai-Hyderabad
Nagpur-Secunderabad
Railway's speed grid:
The broad gauge (BG) lines on Indian Railways have been classified into six groups on the basis of future maximum permissible speed.
Group A: Up to 160 kmph
Group B: Up to 130 kmph
Group C: Suburban section of Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi and Calcutta
Group D special and D: Up to 110 kmph
Group E: Up to 100 kmph
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