"It left at 11:28 am (0558 GMT)," said Rajiv Saxena, a spokesman for India's Northern Railway, which handled the transport arrangements.

The aid consignment is more than three times the previous shipment of 26 tons of relief supplies. The train is scheduled to cross the border in the northern Punjab state near the Pakistani city of Lahore late Friday.

"The supplies total 82 tons which includes 5,000 blankets, 370 tents, five tons of plastic sheets and 12 tons of medicines," the Indian foreign ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

The train will enter Pakistan through the Attari-Wagah route, the only rail link between the nuclear rivals who have fought two of their three wars over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.

On Wednesday, an Indian air force Ilyushin-76 aircraft flew seven truck loads of army medicines, 15,000 blankets and 50 tents to Pakistan after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh offered Islamabad any help it required.

That consignment -- the first such airlift between the neighbours in decades -- was seen as adding new impetus to peace efforts between the two states struck by the quake on Saturday.

The tremor has claimed at least 25,000 lives in Pakistan and more than 1,300 in India.

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