The railways’ interests in Talgo has waned and some bureaucrats are said to be miffed with the ministry.
The high speed Spanish Talgo train, which clocked a speed of 180 kmph between Mumbai and Delhi during its recent trial runs, is all set to head back home as its manufacturer has not received any purchase order from the Indian Railways.
Talgo’s manufacturer has even initiated the custom procedure for the train’s shipping. A specially designed ship would export the nine-coached train to Spain on the intervening night of November 20-21.
According to railway officials, Talgo had asked Delhi to place an immediate order of at least five coaches and run them between the two metropolitans as soon as possible. But the railways’ interests waned for some reason and the bureaucrats, who had been part of the trial since the beginning, are miffed with the ministry over it. “The ministry played to the gallery when the trials were conducted. In fact, the ministry would tweet the kmph that the train had achieved with each trail until it finally hit 180-kmph in its last trial between Delhi and Mumbai in August and September. Now, they seem to care less,” said a railway official, on the condition of anonymity.
Talgo sources said, “We had asked them to order a few coaches at first but there was absolutely no communication. Even after successful trials, the delay was unnecessary but the railways seemed to sit on the fence about that they wanted to do.”
The other suggestion the company made was to establish a factory in India, given the recent ‘Make in India’ push by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well as railway minister Suresh Prabhu. “The hope was that by setting up a manufacturing unit here, both the Indian government and we would benefit,” Talgo sources said.
Shubrat Nath, director of Asia Pacific, Talgo, said, “Yes, we are taking the coaches back for now, the future about ordering our trains will be the railway’s decision.”
One of the reasons for the railway’s dwindling interest could have been the fact that the railway itself runs trains like the Gatimaan Express at 160 kilometres per hour between New Delhi and Agra. The Talgo can go to a maximum speed of 200 km per hour.
