Passengers were transferred to the Shatabdi train after the Lucknow Vande Bharat had a ‘flat tyre.’

The recently introduced semi-high-speed train Vande Bharat Express, which has been in the news for hitting cattle for the past three days, ran into trouble today due to jammed bearings. The past cattle-related railway catastrophes happened on the Gandhinagar-Mumbai track, but this incident happened on the New Delhi-Varanasi route.

The North Central Railway’s Dankaur and Wair stations reported a failure of the Varanasi Vande Bharat (Train number 22436) owing to a bearing fault in the traction motor of the C8 coach.

Although the bearing congestion was resolved, passengers had to be transferred at Khurja station to a Shatabdi train that had been hurriedly brought in from New Delhi because of a flat tyre.

‘After returning the rake to the repair depot, a thorough investigation into the malfunction will be conducted,’ said the officials.

In Gujarat, the Gandhinagar-Mumbai train struck a cow on Friday, only one day after it struck a herd of buffaloes. The train’s front bumper was slightly dented, but yesterday it had to be stopped for ten minutes.

In the incident on Thursday, the train’s ‘nose’ cone came off and it struck four buffaloes. After an eight-minute break, it resumed since the nose, a fibre-reinforced plastic bumper, is not crucial to the vehicle’s operation. Animals perished.

Such incidents with livestock are unavoidable, according to Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, and ‘this has been borne in mind while building the train.’ Its front nose can be completely replaced, the minister stated.

Last month, the newly inaugurated train was flagged off by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who rode it from Gandhinagar to Kalupur station in Ahmedabad.

According to the railways, the train offers superior riding comfort than existing trains and can reach 160 km/h in just over two minutes.