Aiming at popularising the Vande Bharat Express, Indian Railways has now introduced the popular board game “Snakes and Ladders”, to amuse the travellers onboard, during the journey.
The Snake and Ladders board game was introduced in two Vande Bharat trains launched from Mumbai to Shirdi and Solapur to begin with, and is likely to be replicated on other such indigenously built semi-high speed services as well.
According to the latest occupancy data, some of the Vande Bharat trains are not having full occupancy which is a cause of concern for the Railways, as it has planned to manufacture about 1,000 such trains in the next five-six years.
Besides, snakes and ladders game, there are coffee mugs and T-shirts featuring Vande Bharat trains. The snakes and ladders game has been devised in such a way that it resembles the route the Vande Bharat Express Trains travel.
In Mumbai-Sainagar Shirdi and Mumbai-Solapur Vande Bharat train, the board game starts at CSMT and the ladders are replaced with Vande Bharat trains.
If you land, in the board, where the train does not halt, you will go down through snakes and if you land at the halt, you will jump aboard the semi high speed express trains as a way to climb spaces instead.
The snake and ladder board would be given in the train and passengers are expected to return them before deboarding. The Railways expect this new board game will engage the passengers and rekindle the memories of the person playing the board game.
Built at ICF Chennai, the premier Vande Bharat service also has features like wider windows, comfortable seats, automatic doors, GPS-based audio visual passenger information sysytem, and onboard wi-fi.
Currently, ten Vande Bharat trains are operational and from April onward three to four such trains would be rolled out in a month, as the Railways is gearing up to ramp up its production.
While 75 Vande Bharat trains will have seating arrangements, 400 such trains will have sleeper facilities in the first phase.
The design of Vande Bharat Express with sleeper facility is being finalised and the tender for manufacturing 200 such trains is slated to open shortly.
Besides, the Railways will also introduce Vande Metro trains for local and suburban services across the country. The design of Vande Metro train is being finalised now.
Once the specifications are finalised and the prototype is ready, Vande Metro trains would be manufactured at three facilities — ICF Chennai, RCF Kapurthala and MCF Raebareli.