High-Speed Talgo Trains in Uzbekistan Much faster than Vande Bharat!

 High-Speed Talgo Trains in Uzbekistan

Much faster than Vande Bharat!

Sudhanshu Mani

I recently visited Uzbekistan with my wife and some friends. For me, a lifelong wish to experience the land of the invader Amir Timur, or Tamerlane (1336-1405), who never lost a battle and to decipher the intrigue. A Turco-Mongol conqueror who founded the Timurid in areas which are now Central Asia, Agghanistan, Iran and even Russia, one of the greatest, albeit also one of the most brutal, military leader in history, yet also reputed as a great patron of art and architecture. He was the only one to have defeated the Ottomons and of course, we all know about his plunder and massacres in India after defeating the Rajputs and the Delhi sultanate in India. And added to this intrigue was the quest to know about Babur, his much-maligned descendant, who conquered Delhi and established the Mughal empire.

 

The experience was quite rewarding but I am not a historian so it would be difficult to blog about my experience. As for the entire travel experience, my wife Anupama enjoys writing travelogues and she has already posted 2 blogs, part 1 & 2:

https://anupamaexcursions.blogspot.com/2023/11/a-historic-connection.html

https://anupamaexcursions.blogspot.com/2023/12/man-makes-such-disasters.html

I will confine this blog to their railways. The total length of Uzbekistan's railway (called O'zbekiston Temir Yo'llari in Uzbek) network is around 4800 km on Russian 1520 mm gauge. Our first trip was from Tashkent to Khiva in the west in a night sleeper train, a distance of around 1050 km which it covers in approx. 14 hours, passing through Samarqand and Bukhara. The track up to Bukhara is electrified and beyond is on diesel; the work of electrification up to Khiva is sanctioned with the funding tied up but the work has suffered delays due to Covid. Although the maximum speed is barely 90 km/h on these German-built old trains, it maintains an average speed of 75 kmph as there is very little traffic and few stoppages.

It was good that we got to Tashkent station fairly early because to enter train stations in Uzbekistan, you need to pass a security check similar to the ones at the airport. Nevertheless, there is only one train departing at a time and it did not look like it can get very crowded. Entry to the platform is only for ticketed passengers and therefore the platforms are not crowded.  There are two or three classes and although the price gap is not very large between them, we had opted for the Economy  2-tier in the hope of a more rewarding experience. The train body is narrower compared to ours and I found the cabin rather cramped unlike our own 2-tier coaches, affording limited space below the berths but good space is provided in each cabin over the top of the corridor to store luggage. Ours was a 4 per cabin layout with no longitudinal berths on the other side of the corridor; there are trains with layout similar to ours but those would be even more cramped so thankfully, we avoided them. The toilets were clean but not well-maintained and the heating system was a curious one, it seemed to be using some coal-like fuel which I could not reconnoiter much as my attempts to decipher the system seemed to meet the attendant’s censure in looks, language being absent as a means of communication. These trains are essentially Soviet or East German relics of the past when the tracks were not electrified, which it is not fully done even today, and therefore perhaps the coaches use coal oven to heat water for the samovar and to run heating. With electrification supply of electricity through convertors in the locos is easier and by the way, I did not see any Power Cars.

Pathway to cross tracks at Khiva station, our night train, our 4-berth cabin and the dormitory style Sleeper, like ours, which we avoided

 

A largely non-descript journey with not much to write home about except that we kept roosting in our lower berths much beyond our forty winks and the two fellow Uzbek passengers kept perched on the cramped upper berths, without demur, nearly till 11 AM, when we reached Khiva.

 

The next train trip from Khiva to Bukhara was on a similar Sleeper train albeit during day time. Nothing specific to report except that the 450 km was covered even more slowly in 7 hours, with average speed of around 65 kmph; considering that we hardly saw any other train on the way, this was a poorer run compared to the night train. Our cabin, however, had two Hungarian co-travellers who spoke English, and one of them was an ex-railway man, and so we had a long and engaging conversation.

 

A word about Bukhara station which has been developed recently, spacious with a nice station building. Luggage trolleys are provided but in very small numbers so if one does not want to get a porter, there is some struggle in locating a trolley; this was our experience at all stations. We later found that all the stations, particularly Samarqand and Tashkent, are in a similar mode with good amenities with sparse crowd as the number of travellers and trains are limited.

Typical large Uzbekistan railway stations

 

The next two day-journeys promised to be the high points as we had booked in Afrosiyob, their high-speed train said to touch 250 kmph, first from Bukhara to Samarqand and then from Samarqand to Tashkent. Uzbekistan commissioned High-speed rail first between Tashkent and Samarqand (351 km, 2011) and later onwards to Bukhara (249 k, 2016) running only five rakes of Talgo 250 trains on upgraded tracks, operated under the brand name Afrosiyob, named after an ancient site in Uzbekistam as well as the founder of the historical city of Samarqand; the first two rakes cost approx. $19 million each. The first line was commissioned for high-speed at a cost of approximately US $70 million, which included mainly rebuilt and some new trackage and upgrade to a modern Signalling system. With the 600 km distance between Tashkent and Bukhara covered in approximately 4 hours, the average speed ranges from 140 to 150 kmph. Electrification and extension of High-speed trains to Khiva is also in hand.

 

Trains largely run to time and we boarded at Bukhara with great anticipation. For me the train itself, its ride and speed were of greater interest. Before we got into our car, I had a look at the train exterior. Like so many Talgo trains, the train employs Aluminium alloy car body in much shorter length than other trains albeit the width of the train appeared to be wider.  Light-weight design of coaches is Tago’s strongpoint and the train has been designed accordingly. Another USP of Talgo could be seen clearly: a system with independent wheel such that each of the wheels on an axle, both left and right, can rotate at different speeds to improve passenger comfort and reduce the wear to infrastructure caused by trains. The train had natural tilting arrangement which helps increase speed on curves by 20 to 30%; this is of great value in projects seeking to increase the speed of trains on existing tracks without making huge investment in easing the track curvature. I could not verify the details but the train did appear to have articulated arrangement between coaches which improves dynamic behaviour of the trains with higher reliability and increases the periodicity of maintenance interventions. These Talgo trains are decidedly very energy-efficient too. One problem, as you can see in the picture, the footboard to board the train was too high, perhaps due to absence of retractable stairs.

We travelled Economy (2+2 layout) again although the trains have Business and VIP cars (2+1 layout). While amenities were similar to our own Vande Bharat, I found it less spacious. Nothing, no drinks or snacks, were complimentary in Economy class, instead much more expensive than other places in the country. There is a restaurant car in each train, somewhat like the Bordrestaurant of German trains with a counter to order and have it standing there or take it to your seat.

The track had very light fencing all through the HSR route; although we did see occasional stray cattle and a cow was indeed run over by our non-fenced non-HSR night train, the whole terrain is sparsely populated with topography being mostly flat desert or arid plains. While we did not see the speed going above 159 kmph between Bukhara and Samarqand, on the next trip between Samarqand to Tashkent, it did touch 205 kmph; the ride quality, I think was similar to Vande Bharat in the range 130 to 160 kmph. Our queries from the train staff about the train not going beyond these speeds met with incomprehension so we left it at that; it did deliver an average speed of above 140 kmph.

Finally, my takeaways from the Uzbekistan High-Speed Railway (HSR) experience:

 

They have succeeded in successful application of Talgo’s technology to implement a low-cost HSR demonstrating that minimal intervention on the existing rail network can also support high speeds. Trains run at good high speed on straight portions and continue to operate at reasonably good speeds on curved sections.

 

Number of trains are very infrequent, stations limited and far between and there is no pressure of population along the train routes. This would have simplified the Signalling system and some other Safey-related infra works.

 

Our own attempts to get Talgo trains is a sordid story of indecision and inaction which I have related many times. Those interested may go through this post:

 

https://anindecisiveindian.blogspot.com/2021/06/talgo-and-indias-quest-for-modern-train.html

 

Can we not learn something from them or will our pride intervene and scoff? I borrow the words of the bard, spoken though the Fool in Twelfth Night, “Better be a witty fool than a foolish wit”. Stuck that we are with Vande Bharat  in 110 to 130 kmph speed range with 140 to 160 kmph speed only an exception and with no train topping an average speed of 100 kmph! It is not just the train but the whole system of train operation and as the leader of Vande Bharat project, I have no shame in accepting that there are things we could perhaps learn from Uzbeks too; we know that they do not design or manufacture trains of their own but they have been running High-Speed trains for more than a decade.

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PS: Readers may also like to see a video on the Afrosiyob trains in the channel thepublic.india run by my friend Anand Vardhan who was there with me:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td9c2xbYdO4