Prime Minister Narendra Modi will flag off the sixth Vande Bharat Express, a semi-high-speed multiple unit train, on December 11. The train will be operated on the 300-km long Bilaspur (Chhattisgarh)-Nagpur (Maharashtra) route, according to reports.

It will take the train about five-and-a-half hours to cover the distance and will stop at three stations -- Raipur, Durg and Gondia — apart from the origin and destination points. The Vande Bharat Bilaspur (Chhattisgarh)-Nagpur train will run six days a week.

“This train will leave Bilaspur at around 6.45 am and reach Nagpur at around 12.15 pm,” Hindustan Times quoted an Indian Railways official as saying.

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On the return journey, the train will depart from the Nagpur station at 2 pm to reach Bilaspur at 7.35 pm. At present, it takes superfast trains around seven hours to reach Nagpur.

There are around 100 trains operating on this route where 35,000 passengers travel every day. The Vande Bharat train is being inaugurated on this route to attract more passengers, The Times of India reported quoting a railway official.

The train is expected to be operated by the Southeast Central Railways (SECR).

Another Vande Bharat train is likely to be launched on the Secunderabad and Vijayawada route in 2023. Once inaugurated, this will become the first indigenously-built semi high-speed rail to be operated by the South Central Railway (SCR) and second such train in south India.

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The Indian Railways had first inaugurated Vande Bharat Express train on the New Delhi- Kanpur- Allahabad-Varanasi route on February 15, 2019. However, the first new-generation Vande Bharat train was flagged off on the Mumbai- Ahmedabad route in October this year.

In the last budget, the government had announced to operate 400 Vande Bharat trains in the next three years. By August next year, the Indian Railways aims to operate 75 Vande Bharat trains.

Vande Bharat Express runs on a maximum speed of 160 kmph. All coaches in the train have comfortable seats, automatic doors, GPS-based audio-visual passenger information system, and onboard hotspot Wi-Fi.

(Edited by : Jerome Anthony)