Catering to long-standing demand of Harbour Line, passengers who have no option but to travel in 9-car trains, the Central Railway will start operating 12-car rakes on the route between CST and Panvel in a phased manner and first service will be rolled out within fortnight.
Plying of 12-car local trains would be another milestone in the history of Central Railway which recently converted the services on this route to Alternate Current (AC) traction from outdated Direct Current (DC).
"Our major infrastructural work for running 12-car suburban trains is completed. We are giving finishing touches to the last leg of the second phase of the Mumbai Urban Transport Project.
"We are happy to announce that we are going to run the 12-car local trains on Harbour line within a fortnight," said Amitabh Ojha, divisional manager, Mumbai Division, of CR.
He, however, declined to specify the exact date of augmentation of the 12-car rakes, saying, "It could run within a week also and within a fortnight also".
Harbour line, which connects South Mumbai to Panvel in neighbouring Raigad district through CST-Panvel route, runs 590 services everyday by utilising 36 rakes of 9 cars. It also operates 14 services daily at Western line up to Andheri by using 14 rakes of 9 cars.
"Initially, we would be having only one 12-car train to ply on Harbour line which would do 12 services. As and when we get additional 12-car rakes in our fleet, we would enhance the number of 12-car services in a phased manner," Ojha said.
He said that when entire rakes would be converted from 9-car to 12-car, CR would be able to augment 33 per cent of additional capacity on Harbour line.
Ojha praised railway officers for putting in hard work and the officers of Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation (MRVC) who executed the project.
In February, CR had operated a mega block for 72 hours to increase length of Harbour line platforms at CST to accommodate 12-car trains.
"The major bottleneck lied at Dockyard Road station which has been built at the height of over 60 feet. We had to cut the rock to make the space for halting 3 additional cars at the station," the officer said.
He said other infrastructural work such as extension of the platforms and their shelters, re-spacing of signal poles has been done for running 12-car trains.
"Once ample 12-car trains are started running, there might be a marginal impact on time table, which would be worked out later," Ojha added.
