Railways to cooperate with Germany on speeding up trains

New Delhi: The Railway Ministry on Tuesday signed a joint declaration of intent with Germany to carry out a feasibility study on the Chennai-Kazipet corridor for increasing the speed of trains to 200 kmph.

"A joint declaration of intent was signed between Ministry of Railways and Germany regarding carrying out of feasibility study on existing 643 km long Chennai-Kazipet corridor of Indian Railways by German Railways for increasing the speed of passenger trains to 200 kmph," the Railway Ministry said in a statement.

It also said that this study will be done on a 50-50 per cent cost sharing basis.

The Ministry officials also said that the current joint declaration of intent was intended to deepen the cooperation, more specifically towards the achievement in the priority area of Semi High Speed Rail up to 200 kmph on the Chennai-Kazipet corridor.

According to Ministry officials, the project will be completed in three phases in a 22 month period.

In May 2016, a protocol on cooperation in rail sector was signed between both sides in Germany to support the expansion of the high speed and semi high speed network.

The protocol also included concept for increasing the design and the actually driven speeds; for increasing the capacity of railway lines in passenger and goods transport; for improving operational safety to avoid incidents and accidents; for reducing operational costs, in particular by means of energy efficient railway operations; for the cooperation between education and training facilities in India and Germany.