Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi had flagged off the maiden run of the Vande Bharat trainset on New Delhi -Varanasi route on 15th February 2019. The second such Train set service between New Delhi and Shri Mata Vaishnodevi Katra was flagged off by Hon’ble Home Minister Shri Amit Shah on 3rd October 2019.
As part of the continuing initiative of Make in India, the Integral Coach Factory at Chennai has published, today, the tender for supply of electrical equipment and other items for 44 Trainsets of 16 coaches each. The procurement process promotes transparency, accountability, speed of delivery. It ensures compliance with RDSO specifications and vendor neutrality to allow maximum potential bidders to ensure competitive rates.
This is an invitation for two packet Global Competitive bids to procure 3 Phase propulsion equipment  with passenger and operator related peripheral items suitable for maximum service speed 160 kmph speed with 50 % powering .
Bids can be submitted till 1415 hrs on 24th March 2020. A Pre-bid conference will be held on 23/01/2020 at 10.30 Hrs. in the meeting room at the Design & Development Building, Integral Coach Factory, Chennai. The procurement shall be done in accordance with extant "Make in India" policy of DPIIT, Government of India.
In order to improve upon the passenger throughput by way of higher acceleration/ deceleration and reduction in turnaround time, Indian Railways have planned to introduce passenger train sets with distributed powering, working on 25000 V single phase 50 Hz OHE system. This project is driven by corporate mission of providing semi high speed trains with service speed of 160 KMPH having world class technology and passenger amenities.
All coaches in Train set will be Chair Car type for day travel. All the Train sets will be provided with cab AC in DTCs , above roof HT equipment, 25 KV Roof through HT cable assembly with associated accessories like insulators, jumper cables etc, fully air-conditioned passenger compartment with vestibule arrangement, automatic plug doors with retractable footsteps, automatic intercommunication door, PAPIS consisting of in coach displays, speakers, side destination boards etc, luggage racks with reading lamps, direct lighting  and diffused lighting , continuous LED light fixtures, modular pantry equipments and GPS antenna in all coaches, Mobile/laptop charging sockets in the passenger seats, CCTVs and Emergency talk back units with networking system in all coaches.
The tender will be two packet single stage bid, where the bidder has to submit electronic bids for the technical and financial bid simultaneously. The technical bid will be opened first and the offers found eligible will be categorised as qualified. The offer not complying with the essential technical and commercial requirement of the tender will be declared as in- eligible for award of contract. After evaluation of the technical and commercial suitability of offers for placement of order, the Financial bid will be opened for these Technically suitable offers.
The revised specification takes care of the improvements pointed out by Chief Commissioner for Railway Safety in the prototype rake and will provide more reliable service along with ease of operations and improved passenger comfort. These light weight energy efficient trainsets will have a ride index of less than 3.5 against the earlier value of less than 4, which will improve passenger comfort even for longer journeys. These optimized trainsets will also be suitable for operations in Jammu and Kashmir and the electrics will be tested for continuous operations at 160 kmph.
A residual acceleration value of 0.1 ms2, which is double the earlier value of 0.05 ms2, will enable the trainset to reach the top speed of 160 kmph in maximum 140 seconds. The new trainsets will provide an actual saving of 20% in journey time and all equipment are suitable for flooding conditions.
The trainset interiors will have improved fire safety as per EN 45545 HL2 and improved electrical protection and safety with a well-defined protection scheme for High Voltage roof cable, Automatic fire detection and alarm. The trainset is also provided with explosion proof, light weight lithium-iron-phosphate batteries specified to provide back up for duration of 3 hours, state of the art aluminium body roof mounted packaged unit  type air-conditioning units with thermal comfort based Microprocessor controller. The peak efficiency of propulsion system of these trainsets will not be less than 87% which provides for a more robust, efficient and reliable system. These trainsets will be supplied in multiples of Basic Units of 4 coaches each which can be attached or detached from the train as per requirement. This will be a major improvement in reliability and operational efficiency as it will be possible to replace basic units in case of defects, or augment the train length upto 24 coaches in case of increased demand. The present trainsets do not have this feature because of which the entire trainset is rendered ineffective in case of any defect in a coach.