In a major embarrassment to the Narendra Modi government, India's first engineless train, the Vande Bharat Express, broke down early morning on Saturday, before its official commercial run scheduled for Sunday. The breakdown happened less than a day after the Vande Bharat Express was flagged off by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday from the New Delhi railway station. The train resumed its juorney after three hours.
The Vande Bharat Express (also referred to as Train 18) met with a major technical snag at Barhan early morning on Saturday. The incident has cast a shadow on the first commercial ride of Vande Bharat Express set to happen on Sunday morning.
According to Business Standard, around 5.30am, when the Vande Bharat Express was on its way back after the inaugural run with a group of journalists and railway staff, the train met with the technical snag about 18km away from Tundla. This was followed up by smoke and foul smell in the first four coaches of the train.
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There was a major technical fault that led to brake locking and wheel friction, Business Standard cited an official as saying. The snag led to a complete power failure in four coaches.
At the same time, NDTV, quoting the train staff, reported that the controls failed and the snag was "unfixable". Though Vande Bharat Express resumed its journey, the train will have to be taken to Delhi to fix the fault and it cannot be driven above 40km per hour for now, the report said. The Vande Bharat Express had also run out of water. While the Railway Ministry is yet to provide an official statement on the technical snag, reports said the ministry has blamed possible cattle run over for the disruption.
The indigenously-built "semi-high speed" train with a top speed of 180kmph, had touched speeds of 130kmph, on its inaugural run on Friday.
On its first commercial run on Sunday, the train was scheduled to leave New Delhi at 6am and reach Varanasi at 2pm. On the same day, it was expected to leave Varanasi at 3pm and reach Delhi at 11pm.
