All Rajdhani Express Trains

The Rajdhani Express is the oldest premium brand still running on Indian Railways and remains the benchmark for long-distance overnight travel. The name means "capital": each service was conceived to link a state capital to New Delhi, fully air-conditioned, with meals included and the right of way over almost everything else on the line.

This list covers every Rajdhani in the reservation system, including the Tejas Rajdhani services. Those are Rajdhanis in operation and priority but run modernised Tejas-type rakes, and because their names abbreviate to "TEJAS RAJ" they are frequently mislisted elsewhere as Tejas Express services. They are not; they are counted here.

On speed: the figures in the table are average speeds across the whole journey, halts included, worked out from the published schedule. Most Rajdhani services are cleared for 130 km/h, and they hold the highest operational priority on the network.

The first Rajdhani ran between New Delhi and Howrah on 1 March 1969, and it broke with everything Indian Railways had done before. It was fully air-conditioned at a time when air conditioning was rare, it carried a fare that included every meal, and it was cleared for 130 km/h when the rest of the network ran at 100. The journey to Calcutta fell to about seventeen hours.

The operating principle mattered as much as the equipment. A Rajdhani is given precedence over other traffic, which is why it holds its timing on corridors where ordinary expresses lose hours. That priority, rather than any advantage in maximum speed, is what still separates a Rajdhani from a superfast express on the same route.

From 2019 a number of Rajdhani services were re-equipped with Tejas-type coaches: smart LHB stock with automatic doors, individual reading lights, bio-vacuum toilets, and a passenger information system in each bay. The service pattern, the priority and the fare structure stayed Rajdhani; only the rake changed.

Accommodation across the category is First AC, AC 2-tier and AC 3-tier, with no unreserved or non-air-conditioned seating. Fares are dynamic on many services, rising as the train fills, which is why booking early on a Rajdhani saves more than it does on most other trains.

Rajdhani routes are among the longest on the network, and the distance column shows how wide that range is: the shortest are overnight hops of a few hundred kilometres, while services to the north-east and the far south run well past 2,000 km.

Vacant seats?

See which berths fall empty on these trains once the reservation chart is prepared.

Full schedule

Station-by-station timings, halts and running days for any train in this list.