The new Bombardier rakes being built at the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Chennai will start coming into Mumbai from April with officials expecting minor changes in them thanks, to the results obtained from the trial-testing of the two rakes currently on in the city. The trial report is expected to reach ICF by January 15.
Speaking to dna, Pankaj Kumar, chief mechanical engineer, ICF-Chennai, said that the plan was to deliver anything between 24 to 30 such rakes by the end of March 2015. “Our production levels are capable of delivering so many rakes to Mumbai,” said Kumar.
Among the changes, that have been recommended to the ICF engineers by the Western Railway and Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation is to reduce the length of the partition near the doors, so that people can enter the seating area more easily. The two new rakes that have come in have slightly wider partitions which was reducing the width of the aisle leading to the seating area, observed Mumbai-based railway officials. The ICF, has to deliver 72 such rakes including the two sent as prototypes with officials saying the last of the trains should come in by 2016.
Even as the buzz is about Bombardier rakes in the city, five Siemens rakes which had to be delivered as part of the first phase will also be sent to the city starting early January, ICF officials told dna. These rakes never got delivered as the railways was testing it with a new type of high-speed bogies. The tests have since then failed, according to railway officials, and ICF has been asked to build the Siemens rakes with the bogies currently in use.
The new rakes will ease the pressure on WR which has been running a few rakes of lesser power that were brought in March as a quick-gap arrangement. It also runs a few trains converted from Direct Current to Aletrnating Current but officials said that both the types of trains have been giving trouble.
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