India on Friday commissioned its first indigenously developed hydrogen-powered train, the “NaMo Green Rail,” placing the country alongside China, Germany, Japan and the United States in the small league of nations operating hydrogen fuel cell trains on their rail networks.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi flagged off the train at Jind railway station in Haryana, calling it a significant step towards a self-reliant and sustainable India. The train will run on the Jind-Sonipat section of Northern Railway, marking the country’s first commercial deployment of a technology that until now existed only in India’s testing and trial phase.
What makes this train different
Unlike conventional diesel locomotives, the NaMo Green Rail does not burn fuel to move. At its core sits a 1,200-kilowatt Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) — a system that generates electricity through a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen. That electricity powers the train’s traction motors, with water vapour as the only thing coming out at the end of the process.
Officials say this makes the Indian unit the world’s most powerful hydrogen train engine developed so far, with existing global models typically operating in the 500-600 HP range against India’s 1,200 HP configuration.
The rake itself comprises two hydrogen-powered driving cars coupled with eight passenger coaches, capable of ferrying up to 2,600 passengers at a maximum speed of 75 kmph.
The infrastructure behind the headline
Powering a hydrogen train is only half the challenge — storing and refuelling it safely is the other half, and India has built serious capacity on that front too.
The country’s largest railway hydrogen storage and refuelling facility has come up at Jind, capable of holding close to 3,000 kg of hydrogen at any given time. The Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation (PESO) has cleared the facility for storage and dispensing of compressed hydrogen gas, with the entire setup designed to internationally recognised safety standards, including NFPA-2 fire protection norms and the ISO 19880 series for hydrogen fuelling stations.
This isn’t a one-off pilot either. The rollout is part of Indian Railways’ larger “Hydrogen for Heritage” initiative, under which 35 hydrogen-powered trains are planned across the country’s heritage and hill rail routes — corridors where full electrification is either impractical or prohibitively expensive, and where diesel locomotives have remained the default for decades.
What it costs, and why it matters
Each hydrogen train is estimated to cost around Rs 80 crore, with an additional Rs 70 crore earmarked per route for ground-level hydrogen infrastructure. Railway officials have acknowledged that running costs will be higher in the initial phase, but expect these to come down meaningfully as the hydrogen train fleet scales up nationally.
For a railway network as vast as India’s — one of the largest in the world — the appeal of hydrogen isn’t about replacing electrified trunk routes. It’s about offering a genuinely zero-emission alternative on the thousands of kilometres of track that remain unelectrified, where diesel has continued to run by default simply because there hasn’t been a viable clean alternative.
Part of a bigger green push
The hydrogen train launch comes close on the heels of India’s first indigenously developed hydrogen fuel cell ferry, launched under the Harit Nauka initiative for inland waterway transport — signalling a broader, coordinated push by the government to bring hydrogen technology across multiple modes of transport, not just the railways.
Indian Railways has set its sights on achieving net-zero carbon emissions, with hydrogen positioned as one of the key technological pathways alongside continued track electrification and renewable energy adoption. The success — or failure — of this Jind pilot, running on a modest 75 kmph regional route today, will likely determine how fast that ambition scales into the rest of the network.
For now, though, the milestone stands: a train engineered, fuel-celled and refuelled entirely on Indian soil, quietly running on nothing more exotic than hydrogen, oxygen, and the water vapour left behind.
-Rashmi Kumari
