South Central Railway (SCR) has plans to develop three modern maintenance depots for the Vande Bharat Express trains — one at Tellapur, second at the upcoming new fourth passenger terminal at Cherlapally and another at Tirupati.
This will be in addition to the existing basic maintenance facilities at Secunderabad, Vijayawada, Kacheguda and Tirupati. About ₹10 crore has been allocated for the maintenance of the VB trains in the latest allocation and this could kick off the civil works, senior officials say. While the Tellapur facility is to be established at a cost of ₹440 crore, Cherlapally facility is estimated to cost about ₹221 crore and it will be about ₹325 crore in Tirupati. These projects are in various stages of approval and are expected to be cleared in stages when more Vande Bharat trains are introduced in this section.
The very first Vande Bharat Express train for the zone was flagged off on January 15 last year towards Visakhapatnam (Train No. 20833/20844) from Secunderabad, which has primary maintenance there and the other end maintenance is at Secunderabad station.
