Indian Railways To Upgrade Vande Bharat Trains With Extra Coaches On Seven Key Routes

Indian Railways is set to introduce additional coaches on Vande Bharat trains across seven high-demand routes. Currently, 10 Vande Bharat Sleeper trains are under production, and the Railway Board has rolled out a new initiative to enhance capacity in response to rising passenger occupancy. As per the plan, 20 coaches will be deployed on seven busy routes, based on passenger load patterns.

At present, Indian Railways operates 144 Vande Bharat train services, which have reported strong passenger turnout. The overall occupancy stood at 102.01 percent in FY 2024-25 and further increased to 105.03 percent in FY 2025-26 (up to June 2025). The seven routes identified for coach augmentation are: Mangaluru Central-Thiruvananthapuram Central, Secunderabad-Tirupati, Chennai Egmore-Tirunelveli, Madurai-Bengaluru Cantt, Deoghar-Varanasi, Howrah-Rourkela, and Indore-Nagpur.

Explaining the plan, Dilip Kumar, Executive Director of Information and Publicity, Railway Board, said, "The 16-car train will be upgraded to 20-car and those with 8-car will be increased to 16-car. Based on occupancy data for FY 2025-26 (up to July 31, 2025) and feasibility for augmentation, we have tentatively planned to expand three 16-car Vande Bharat services into 20-car and four 8-car services into 16-car."

Under this upgradation, three routes - Mangaluru Central-Thiruvananthapuram Central, Secunderabad-Tirupati, and Chennai Egmore-Tirunelveli - will be enhanced from 16 coaches to 20. Meanwhile, the other four routes - Madurai-Bengaluru Cantt, Deoghar-Varanasi, Howrah-Rourkela, and Indore-Nagpur - which currently run with 8-coach trains, will be expanded to 16 coaches.