Spanish trains to take over Indian rail tracks soon!

If everything goes as planned, you may soon be travelling in a Madrid-based locomotive and reach your destination early.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA government has given an in-principle nod to Madrid-based locomotive-maker Talgo to undertake trial runs of its lighter and faster trains.

Jose Maria Oriol, Talgo’s Chief executive Officer, met Modi and said a formal nod was awaited to start shipping process of trains from Spain to India.

Economic Times reported that Talgo was hopeful to start trial process by October-November at its own risk on Indian Railway tracks.

If the trial is successful, it could cut travel time between Mumbai and Delhi from 17 hours to 12 hours as these lighter locomotives can run with a speed of 160 kilometres to 220 km an hour and are being used across the world on legacy rail tracks, including the US.

"Most of the technical part has been solved, now it is the practical part of doing it. Up to now, we have an informal approval. What we need is a piece of paper to say: go ahead. I don't think it would take too long after this set of meetings," Oriol told ET.

He also emphasised the company will bear the costs of bringing the train from Spain.

"Of the 60,000 km of railway tracks in India, some would be upgraded, but most would remain as it is. That's where we can make a difference, by increasing the speed of the train without changing the track infrastructure," Oriol told the financial daily.

Talgo is also interested to establish a manufacturing hub in India to tap the Indian and Asia-Pacific market using the recently opened window for 100% FDI in the sector.

"I see a willingness to invest and improve. I don't know how long it will take. Whenever you deal with politicians, whether it is India or Spain or Italy, you have to be patient. But in this case, knowing that this government is keen to show some improvements in services to the citizens, it is looking to do that in a rather short time period," Oriol told ET.

It is noteworthy Talgo has a commercial office in India and it has used the time to identify a potential supply chain of tier-I and tier-II vendors that can help it localise its product swiftly once it sets up shop.

"We are pleased to say that we can find most of the components we need at a very attractive cost here. We have also sub-contracted design and development to a lot of Indian engineers here and they are very skillful at a very attractive price," Oriol told ET, adding they were also exploring options in China, Japan, Malaysia.