New Delhi: Railways has identified nine corridors for taking action to raise the speed of passenger trains to 160-200 kmph, the Rajya Sabha was told today.
The routes are Delhi-Agra, Delhi-Chandigarh, Delhi-Kanpur, Nagpur-Bilaspur, Mysore-Bengaluru-Chennai, Mumbai-Goa, Mumbai-Ahmedabad, Chennai-Hyderabad and Nagpur-Secunderabad, Minister of State for Railway Manoj Gupta said in a written reply.
Trial of Shatabdi Express and similar trains up to a maximum speed of 160 kmph between New Delhi-Agra and back was conducted on July 3 this year assessing the fitness of track at a particular speed and was found to be successful at 160 kmph.
He said the trial train took 102 minutes and 105 minutes from New Delhi-Agra Cantt and Agra Cantt-New Delhi respectively.
The rolling stock Linke Hofmann Busch (LHB) coaches and electric loco had already been tested earlier successfully at speed of 180 kmph.
During the trial, all issues related to safety, technical aspects related to rolling stock and with other technical sub-systems like track, bridges, signaling, overhead equipments have been checked and found to be in order.