Stones pelted at Vande Bharat Express, third incident in two months

Train 18: A stone was hurled at the Vande Bharat Express on Wednesday breaking one of its window panes, the third such incident in two months involving India's fastest train, the railways said.

The train was crossing Tundla junction when the incident happened, Northern Railway Spokesperson Deepak Kumar said.

This was the semi-high speed train's third commercial run after it started operations on February 17.

Earlier, during a trial run between Delhi and Agra in December last year, stones were hurled at the train as well. A similar incident occurred earlier that month too.

Read: PM Narendra Modi slams opposition for targeting Vande Bharat Express, says it's an insult to Indian engineers

After the first incident of stone throwing, the Railway Protection Force (RPF) had started campaigns across the areas where such cases were reported.

Investigation into several incidents of the sort in Delhi established that most of the stone-pelters were young children. Since then, the RPF has distributed toys, sweets, colour pencils and other such things to them to stop them from hurling stones at trains. 

Train 18, the country's first engineless train which has been manufactured by Integral Coach Factory, Chennai, recently became India's fastest train by hitting speeds of over 180 kmph during a trial run on a section of the Delhi-Rajdhani route. It will replace Shatabdi trains and will run between Delhi and Varanasi.

Piyush Goyal named the railways' ambitious Train18 as Vande Bharat Express, however, the man who led the team of its manufacturers said the train will always be known by its generic name.

Acknowledging its made-in-India status, the Indian Railways named the indigenously manufactured semi-fast Train 18 as Vande Bharat Express.

The 16-coach train, built in 18 months at a cost of Rs 97 crores by the Integral Coach Factory, Chennai, is regarded as a successor to the 30-year-old Shatabdi Express. It's also the first locomotive-less train in the country.

Train 18 has diffused lighting, an on-board infotainment system with Wi-Fi, vacuum toilets, sliding doors besides a GPS-based passenger information system.

(With inputs from PTI)