All Shatabdi Express Trains

A Shatabdi Express is a daytime, chair-car, fully air-conditioned service designed around a single idea: leave in the morning, do a day's work in another city, and be home the same night. There are no sleeping berths. The whole train is seated, and the schedules are built to make the return trip possible.

The list below gives every Shatabdi service with the distance it covers and the average speed it holds. Shatabdi routes are deliberately short by Indian standards, and the category includes the Swarna Shatabdi services, which are upgraded rakes on the busiest corridors.

On speed: the figures in the table are average speeds across the whole journey, halts included, worked out from the published schedule. Cleared for up to 150 km/h on the Delhi to Agra section; 130 km/h is the usual ceiling elsewhere.

The Shatabdi was introduced in 1988 to mark the birth centenary of Jawaharlal Nehru, which is where the name comes from: shatabdi means centenary. The first service ran between New Delhi and Jhansi and was soon extended to Bhopal, and it introduced a type of travel that had not existed on the network before.

For most of the following three decades the Bhopal Shatabdi was the fastest train in India, cleared for 150 km/h on the Delhi to Agra stretch. That title has since passed to the Gatimaan Express and then to the Vande Bharat fleet, but the operating pattern the Shatabdi invented is exactly the one Vande Bharat now runs.

Accommodation is AC Chair Car and Executive Chair Car. Catering is included in the fare and served at the seat, with the meals matched to the hours the train runs, so a morning departure brings breakfast and an evening one brings dinner. Because every seat is reserved and the train is sealed and air-conditioned throughout, boarding is quick and the coaches stay quiet.

Shatabdi services connect a major city to the business and tourist destinations within a few hours of it. That is why the distances in the table are modest compared with a Rajdhani, and why the average speeds are among the highest on the network despite the frequent halts.

The Jan Shatabdi is a separate, more economical category with a mix of air-conditioned and non-air-conditioned seating, and it is listed on its own page. Vande Bharat services have replaced Shatabdi trains on a number of corridors, and on some routes both still run, which makes the average-speed column here a direct and useful comparison.

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.