The Bengaluru – Mumbai Vande Bharat Sleeper

Indian Railways has announced that the third Vande Bharat Sleeper on the network will start service between Mumbai and Bengaluru. This will be the first Vande Bharat Sleeper train for South India and the first one outside the New Delhi – Varanasi route. As of the information available as of now, the inaugural run is expected to happen on November 1, 2026 which is also Karnataka Rajyotsava or the Karnataka state formation day from both Bangalore and Mumbai as a special service. The actual commercial run will commence from the next day. The train will be operated by the Bengaluru division of the South Western Railway (SWR) using two dedicated 16-car Vande Bharat Sleeper rakes that will be based at the Bengaluru SBC depot.

27652/27651 KSR Bengaluru City – Mumbai CSTM – Bengaluru City Vande Bharat Sleeper Superfast Express (SWR)

Divn: SBC | 16 coaches | Distance: 1092 km | Halts: 7 | Time: 15h 50m | Avg Speed: 69 kph | No service: Mon

Detailed Timetable and Schedule

NOTE: The timetables and information shown here are tentative. Please stand by for the finally confirmed timetables to be published by SWR and the Railway Board. They will be updated here as soon as they are available.

The 27652 Vande Bharat Sleeper to Mumbai will depart from Krantiveera Sangolli Rayanna Bengaluru City Jn SBC every day of the week except on Mondays at 2200 (10 pm) in the night from (presumably) Platform 5 to reach reach Mumbai Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus CSMT at 1350 (1:50 pm) the next afternoon. On its return journey, the 27651 Bengaluru Vande Bharat Sleeper train will leave Mumbai CSMT at 2230 (10:30 pm) every night except on Tuesdays to arrive at KSR Bengaluru City Jn SBC at 1450 (2:50 pm) in the afternoon the next day. The detailed timetable for both services is given below.

Route and Stoppages

There was a lot of speculation as of which route the new Vande Bharat Sleeper would take. Would it be via the Hubli – Miraj route which passes through the heartland of Karnataka but is longer, has more ghat sections and is less speed-rated, or would it be via Dharmavaram – Guntakal – Wadi via the old trunk line which passes through Telangana and Maharashtra while briefly re-entering Karnataka only for Raichur and Kalaburagi but is shorter, faster and more direct? It looks like Guntakal route has won for now, with the VB Sleeper following the route of the Udyan Express. From Bangalore it will head north via Yelahanka (no stop) on the Bangalore – Dharmavaram – Guntakal line where it will join the Chennai – Mumbai trunk line to head further north towards Raichur and Wadi, from where the line turns north-westerly to reach Pune and finally Mumbai. The train will cover 1062 kilometers in total though the states of Karnataka, Telangana and Maharashtra.

The Bengaluru – Mumbai VB Sleeper will have commercial stoppages at Anantapur, Guntakal, Raichur, Kalaburagi (Gulbarga), Solapur, Pune and Kalyan on both sides of its run.

Accommodation

The Vande Bharat trains are technically MEMU train sets with a fixed configuration of coaches and distributed traction power. This means that they do not have locomotives (engines) but have motors attached to bogies (wheel sets) distributed throughout the train. The equipment used to feed power to the bogies is also distributed throughout the train. The regular Vande Bharat day trains and Vande Bharat sleeper trains only differ in the accommodation they provide.

The 27652/27651 Bengaluru-Mumbai Vande Bharat Sleeper service will be run using two 16-car VB Sleeper rakes that are fully air-conditioned and fully reserved with only sleeping accommodation consisting of 11 AC 3 tier coaches (B1-B11) with a total of 611 berths, 4 AC 2 tier coaches (A1-A4) with 188 berths available and one AC First Class coach (H1) with 24 berths. This 16-car Vande Bharat Sleeper hence has a total capacity of 823 berths available for commercial passengers. The coach composition of the 16 car VB Sleeper rake used for the Bengaluru – Mumbai Vande Bharat service is as follows.

The third row denotes number of berths in the coach and the fourth row shows the type of the coach. MC means the coach is a Motor Car with motors on its bogies (wheels) driving the train forward while TC means it is a Trailer Car or just an ordinary coach with no motors and is just being pulled along. DTC means the coach is a Driving Trailer Car present at the either ends of the train (with a driving cab) which also does not have motors. If you are wondering, 3 tier AC accommodation occupies the remaining part of the driving cab coach.

Why a Vande Bharat Sleeper between Bangalore and Mumbai is a big deal

You will be hard pressed to find another rail route in the country that was as neglected as Bangalore – Mumbai. It was for ages a matter of unending wonder as to why there was only ONE dedicated daily connection between these two economic powerhouses, one the “Silicon Valley” of India with its technology and IT companies, and the other that is the undisputed financial capital of the country and the biggest and most populous city in the country and one of the megacities of the world. And then there is also Pune which can stand to itself to Bangalore as a IT powerhouse that also have only a fleeting, quota-based rail connection to it. And it is not just that there’s only one train between the cities, it is also that it takes an entire 24 hours to cover the distance, which has not changed since this legendary crawler the Udyan Express was first introduced 43 (yes, FORTY THREE!) years ago in 1983!

Yes, there are a few other trains Between Bangalore and Mumbai, but they just happen to stop at the city on their way to Coimbatore or Tirunelveli or Pondicherry. Despite so many trains and premium classes launched over the decades by the Indian Railways, the Bangalore-Mumbai route never saw any of them. No Duronto, no Tejas, no Antyodaya, no Garib Rath, in fact, not even a regular Superfast train or even a weekly until 2025! You know what is funny? During the Meter Gauge and Steam era of the Southern Railway there were at one time four direct daily services to Bombay from Bangalore! (though it meant changing trains at Pune or Miraj or Guntakal). Though we seemed to be progressing over the decades of independence, we were actually standing still or regressing in terms of many aspects with the railways, especially travel times and speed.

Any way, there is now finally redemption on the horizon after half a century of suffering. The Vande Bharat Sleeper is for all intents the most “Premium” class of service that Indian Railway has ever introduced. And most deservedly the Bangalore-Mumbai route gets the third of them and the first in South India! There is now finally a way to get between the cities fast, in style and in comfort as nature always intended it to be, and out of the clutches of the airline duopoly mafia! The VB Sleeper will without doubt unleash a revolution in rail travel on this route and all the others it would later be introduced on.

A few remarks and observations about the Bangalore Mumbai VB Sleeper

The timetable of the new SBC-CSTM-SBC Vande Bharat Sleeper does seem to look promising. It is indeed slated to depart from the premier, central stations of both Mumbai (CSMT) and Bangalore (KSR SBC) which is a massive step in itself because platform slots in these stations are incredibly hard to come by anymore. They depart at night around 10 pm from both ends which is an extremely sensible step that will give people time to finish their work before heading off. It would be prudent to think that passengers would be leaving at around 830 pm to 9 pm to the station which is “that” sweet departure spot. Pune which is the most important station enroute would see a past-midnight boarding time and late morning arrival. There are no very important other towns on the way, and it can be safely assumed that more than 80% of the passengers will be travelling between the end stations.

The timetable as it is now also offers some surprising stoppage omissions: Yelahanka, Dharmavaram, Wadi, and Thane. DMM and WADI would be technical halts supposedly which very well may be converted into commercial stops later. However, there should’ve been stoppages allocated at Yelahanka and Thane. These stations might be on the outskirts of the big city but are still important extensions and urban agglomerations in their own right that have populations in the hundreds of thousands. Indian Railways should start considering mandatory stoppages on the agglomeration outskirts of major cities as that is where large populations now live. Yelahanka is one such. It would currently take two hours or more on a bad day for a person to reach the Bangalore City Station from Yelahanka.

And finally, the train is fast. The VB Sleeper is capable of 160 kph but it will max out at the allowed top speed of 130 kph on this route. And all existing trains are going to be decimated by it and how! The VB Sleeper covers the 1000 odd kilometers between Bangalore and Mumbai in less than 16 hours, which is a massive EIGHT hours faster than the currently running (crawling) trains. To put it in context, the 11302 Udyan Express that leaves around an hour and 20 minutes ahead of the VB Sleeper won’t even have reached Daund (250 km away) by the time the VB reaches Mumbai. By the time the Udyan finally pulls into CSTM nearly seven hours after the VB had arrived, it would already be preparing for its return journey in a couple of hours. Finally, even with all the drum beating, the average speed of the VB Sleeper is still only 69 kph which though is a substantial improvement over the Udyan’s 51 kph it more than anything shows how long we still have to go before we get actual modern infrastructure in India.

Hopefully this Vande Bharat Sleeper is a start to connect the chronically underconnected capitals of South India will also be connected by Vande Bharat Sleepers soon. VB Sleepers connecting Bangalore with Trivandrum, Hyderabad with Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai and Mumbai with Chennai should be the next priorities. And of course, another VB Sleeper via Hubli-Miraj to commemorate the iconic route of the historic Bombay-Poona “One” Mail should also be on the cards.