On Friday, June 26, India’s first home-built hydrogen train rolled out of Jind station in Haryana and reached 120 km/h on the Jind-Sonipat line. It was the last engineering test before the train can carry paying passengers.
The run had been planned for June 24 and slipped by two days. A specialised unit from the Research Designs and Standards Organisation (RDSO) in Lucknow was on site to oversee it. RDSO has to approve every component on Indian Railways before it enters revenue service, so its presence was no formality. The trial looked at emergency braking distance and oscillation, along with the braking system, safety systems, vibration and track condition. Crew members monitored the power car, the controls and the speed sensors throughout.
Those 120 km/h are a test figure. The railway ministry cleared the trainset in May to run at 75 km/h between Jind and Sonipat under Northern Railway, a deliberately cautious ceiling.
Length and power
Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has described it as the world’s longest hydrogen train on broad gauge. The set has ten coaches: a driving power car at each end and eight passenger coaches between them. Germany’s Coradia iLint, which opened the modern hydrogen era in 2018, runs as a two-car set.
Each power car is rated at 1,200 kW, 2,400 kW in all. By the ministry’s account, each is roughly twice as powerful as the fuel cell systems running in Germany and China. The train, branded Namo Green Rail, seats up to 2,600 passengers, and the air conditioning, lighting and fans also draw on the hydrogen system. Officials put its range at about 250 km on one fill.
Indian-built, with one imported part
The Integral Coach Factory in Chennai built the railcar, and Medha Servo Drives of Hyderabad handled system integration. The hydrogen plant at Jind, with its electrolyser, storage and dispensing equipment, was also set up in India. The fuel cell modules were not. They come from Canada’s Ballard Power Systems, eight units of 100 kW each, based on proton-exchange membrane technology that India does not make.
The wider supplier picture is shaky. Cummins booked roughly $657 million in charges over 15 months while closing its fuel cell business, citing lower expectations for hydrogen adoption, and sold the rail portion to Alstom. In Germany, Alstom pulled most of its Coradia iLint fleet from service in late 2024 for rework. By August 2025 only four of the 14 units in Lower Saxony were still running, and diesel covered the gap.
Why Jind-Sonipat
The route runs roughly 89 to 90 km on a non-electrified Northern Railway branch. Hydrogen makes sense there because the alternative is diesel exhaust in a populated corridor. Indian Railways built hydrogen production, storage and refuelling facilities at Jind for the project, and the Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation has issued the licence to fill and store compressed hydrogen on site. The train carries hydrogen leak detectors, flame detection units and continuous monitoring tools.
The paperwork comes next. Approval from the ministry does not put the train in service tomorrow. Northern Railway still has to file compliance reports against conditions set by RDSO, the Commissioner of Railway Safety and other statutory bodies. Once that is done, the train is due to start carrying commuters between Jind and Sonipat at 75 km/h.
Sources
- India just pushed its 10-coach hydrogen train to 120 km/h, the last engineering test between the world's longest hydrogen trainset and paying passengers — 2,600 seats where even the air conditioning runs on hydrogen, now one compliance file away from service
- Make in India: First Hydrogen Train Hits 120 Km/h in Trial
