Vande Bharat sleeper: Russia’s TMH-RVNL consortium emerges lowest bidder to make Rajdhani-style Vande Bharat trains

Vande Bharat sleeper trains: Russia’s CJSC Transmashholding (TMH) in a tie-up with Rail Vikas Nigam Limited (RVNL) has emerged as the lowest bidder in the tender for manufacturing and maintaining 200 sleeper variants of the Vande Bharat Express trains. BHEL-Titagarh has emerged as the second lowest bidder. Indian Railways is looking to manufacture 200 Vande Bharat Express sleeper trains – a more premium version of Rajdhani Express trains.
Sources told TOI that Indian Railways is looking to ramp up the production of Vande Bharat Express trains by awarding this contract. The present technology used to manufacture Vande Bharat trains will be used by the new manufacturer. The sleeper version of the Vande Bharat train is being designed and this contract will help in scaling up their production, sources said.
Russia’s TMH and RVNL had estimated a cost of Rs 120 crore per train set for manufacturing. This is less than Rs 128 crore per Vande Bharat train set as manufactured by ICF.

Indian Railways had qualified the technical bids of five players for the Rs 58,000 crore project; BEML-Siemens, BHEL-Titagarh, AlstomStadler-Medha and Russian TMH with RVNL. The lowest bidder has to manufacture and maintain 120 Vande Bharat sleeper trains, while the second lowest bidder will get a chance to match the lowest bid and manufacture and maintain 80 train sets.
In their present form, Vande Bharat Express trains are air-conditioned chair car services. The self-propelled Vande Bharat trains are capable of running at speeds of 160 kmph.
According to the tender documents, the Vande Bharat Express sleeper trains will offer passenger amenities that are “best-in-class” of trains running globally. The trains will be premium offerings in terms of aesthetics, functionality and comfort. Indian Railways had asked the bidders to study the stainless steel LHB coaches that it currently manufactures to ensure that the amenities for passengers on Vande Bharat sleeper trains are “far superior”.
The new Vande Bharat sleeper trains will be manufactured for a life of 35 years and are expected to be used for medium to long-distance travel. Railway experts have been stressing on the need to launch the Rajdhani-style variant of Vande Bharat Express since the demand for overnight travel is higher. According to rail experts, semi-high speed trains like Vande Bharat sleeper can help bring down travel time between major cities to under 12 hours.
Meanwhile, Indian Railways has separately floated a tender for manufacturing 100 aluminium Vande Bharat trains in India, which will be a first for railways. The technical bids for the tender were recently submitted. France’s Alstom and Swiss major Stadler in a tie-up with Medha were the only two bidders for the ambitious Rs 30,000 crore project.