A 16-coach Vande Bharat freight train built to carry parcels ran from Ahmedabad to Mumbai Central and back on 12 and 13 September, touching 130 kmph with half its payload on board. The Research Designs and Standards Organisation (RDSO), the railways’ technical wing, ran the trial to see whether the rake can handle fast parcel services, DeshGujarat and the Free Press Journal reported.
Western Railway’s Ahmedabad division prepared the train at the Inland Container Depot in Sabarmati. It left Ahmedabad at 9 am on Saturday, ran via Vadodara to Mumbai Central, and made the return run from Mumbai at 9 am on Sunday.
What the railways are testing
The Integral Coach Factory in Chennai built the rake on the Vande Bharat EMU platform, the same self-propelled design behind the passenger trains, with motors spread along the train and no separate locomotive. The freight version swaps seats for cargo space: roller flooring so pallets can slide in, wide automatic sliding doors, temperature-controlled vans for perishables, CCTV and fire detection, according to DeshGujarat and Railway Supply.
The Gujarat run tested a loaded train. RDSO ran it at 50 per cent payload with a 20.32-tonne axle load. On an earlier trial in West Central Railway territory, on the Chaumahla-Shamgarh-Gurla section, the same rake reached about 145 kmph while empty. Both reports frame the new data as input for a safety and performance assessment, and the railways have announced no launch date, route, frequency or freight rate.
Why the test ran through Gujarat
The railways have pitched the train at e-commerce consignments, courier packets, electronics, pharmaceuticals and cold-chain goods. The Ahmedabad-Vadodara-Surat-Mumbai line links Gujarat’s largest cities with the country’s biggest consumer market. The train’s competition on that corridor is the truck on NH-48, which loads at a warehouse and unloads at a customer’s door. A parcel train wins that business only if it matches the truck on door-to-door time and price.
Speed on the rails is the easy half of that test. The trial proved the rake can run at 130 kmph with cargo; it said nothing about how quickly goods reach the train or leave it at the other end. The choice of ICD Sabarmati as the trial base hints at one answer, since container depots already handle trucks, customs and warehousing, but the railways have not said where a commercial service would load.
What it means for Gujarat businesses
- Pharma and cold chain: the temperature-controlled vans matter most to Gujarat’s drug makers and distributors, whose medicines and vaccines cannot sit in heat on a long haul.
- Surat and Ahmedabad traders: businesses that rely on road couriers to reach Mumbai would get a second option, if the schedule and rate work for them.
- E-commerce sellers: online sellers based in Gujarat live on delivery promises. A dependable train would help only if the platforms and courier firms book space on it.
What to watch
Three decisions come next. RDSO’s clearance for commercial operation, which comes before anything else. The route the railways pick for a first service, and whether Ahmedabad-Mumbai gets it after hosting the trial. And the tariff, which will decide whether courier and e-commerce firms move any volume off NH-48. Until the railways publish those details, the Vande Bharat freight train remains a test rake that nobody can book.
Sources: DeshGujarat, Free Press Journal, Railway Supply
This report was written with AI assistance from the publicly reported sources linked here; each fact was cross-checked against at least two of them.