The Central Railway today rolled out the 12-car rake suburban service on its Harbour Line route which falls between Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) in Mumbai and Panvel in Raigad district.
The CR currently runs nearly 590 services daily on the Harbour Line by utilising 36 rakes each of nine cars. It also operates 14 services daily on the western line up to Andheri by using 14 rakes each of nine cars.
Commenting on the development, CR's Chief PRO Narendra Patil said, "Yes, we have successfully rolled out 12-car trains on our Harbour Line in the CST to Panvel section."
"The 12-car local train on Harbour Line chugged off from Vashi station at 6 AM in the morning and reached Wadala Road station at scheduled time," Patil said.
There was no technical glitch because of the good work done by a team of Central Railway and Mumbai Railway Vikas Corporation (MRVC) officers, he said.
Wadala Road is the connecting point for Harbour Line services that ply to Andheri in western suburbs as well as on the CST-Panvel route, while Vashi is the first satellite city in Navi Mumbai.
However, commuters will have to wait for operationalisation of the 12-car service on other routes of Harbour Line - CST to Andheri and Thane to Vashi.
"The 12-car rake would make 14 trips every day from today and would increase the passenger-carrying capacity by an additional 33 per cent," Patil said.
The CR will introduce more 12-car rakes on the Harbour Line fleet as and when it gets them.
It will monitor the impact of the 12-car rake services on the punctuality of train movement, he said.
"Our team would monitor and study the running of the train and try to ascertain its impact on punctuality, passengers and train movement," DRM Amitabh Ojha, of CR's Mumbai division, said.
The plying of 12-car local trains is another milestone for the Central Railway, which recently converted the services on this route to Alternate Current (AC) traction from the outdated Direct Current (DC).
In February, the CR had operated a mega-block of 72 hours to increase the length of Harbour Line platforms at CST to accommodate 12-car trains, in view of the burgeoning population in Navi Mumbai.
