Harbour line to get 11 Western Railway rakes

Harbour line to get 11 Western Railway rakes

Mumbai: Harbour line stands to get 11 rakes following officials thinking of shifting old ones currently running on Western Railway (WR) due to failure to initiate the 5th and 6th lines on time.

Although the lines had been built for long distances, officials were planning to run extra suburban services by running local trains when there was a gap between long distance trains using these 11 rakes however the plan was foiled owing to the 5th line facing encroachment issues and work on the 6th line being a long way from completion.

Officials said these 11 rakes had been fixed to run on both alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC) and could run on the Harbour line as well. Besides, they would be available even after 70 of the 72 Bombardier trains had arrived in phases by the end of the year.

“We thought we would run these 11 rakes and increase the number of suburban services by running them between passenger trains on the 5th and 6th line because passenger trains do not run as often as our surburban trains but since the lines have not opened yet, we plan to shift these to the Harbour line instead,” said an official.

The 5th line runs from Mahim to Santa Cruz while the 6th line runs from Santa Cruz to Borivali. “We are planning to run extra services on mainline Harbour as well as Trans-Harbour with the help of these rakes. The issues with the 5th line will be resolved only post Ramzan because of a graveyard near Bandra Terminus and the 6th line will take till end of this year because of severe land procurement issues,” added the official.

The decision also comes at a time when Central Railway (CR) officials have realised that none of the DC trains can be shifted to Harbour after the mainline converted from DC to AC since they had reached their maximum life expectancy.