The much-awaited Spanish-made Talgo high-speed train completed its last Delhi-Mumbai final trial run in less than 12 hours, the Ministry of Railways said on Sunday.
A senior official of the railways told IANS: "The train left from New Delhi at 2.45 p.m. and reached Mumbai in 11 hours 42 minutes -- two minutes ahead of its scheduled time."
The Railway Ministry took to twitter to share the news of the successful trial run of Talgo and said: "In a big boost to IR's dreams of semi-high (speed), Talgo's train completed Delhi-Mumbai Rajdhani route trial in less than 12 hours."
In a big boost to IR' dreams of semi-high #Talgo's train completed #Delhi#Mumbai Rajdhani route trial in <12Hrs pic.twitter.com/sGd1SbSDQI
— Ministry of Railways (@RailMinIndia) September 11, 2016
Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu congratulated the railways team and wrote: "A major achievement for our team. We are working on increasing speed, reducing travel time using innovative means."
Previously, the Talgo train reached Mumbai from Delhi 18 minutes late in its third trial on Friday.
Travelling 1,384 km stretch between New Delhi and Mumbai, the train at 140 km per hour speed reached 3.15 AM instead of scheduled arrival at 2.57 AM.
Talgo aims to reduce travel time between Delhi-Mumbai by four hours. Currently, the super-fast Rajdhani Express train takes around 16 hours between New Delhi and Mumbai.
Railways had conducted the first trial run of Talgo trains on the Bareilly-Moradabad stretch in Uttar Pradesh followed by the second trial run was conducted on the Palwal-Mathura section of the North-Central Railway in August.
(With agency inputs)