Mumbai : Broken seats, non-functional lights and fans and more importantly trains stuck due to technical failure will soon be a thing of past for the 4 lakh commuters using Central Railway, as an additional workshop is almost ready at Sanpada that will reduce the burden of the sole Matunga workshop and increase the maintenance capacity.
Central Railway (CR) is converting the carshed at Sanpada into a workshop which will be used for maintenance of the Electrical Multiple Units (EMU) also the lifeline of Mumbai. The Sanpada workshop will be used along with existing Matunga workshop whi-ch currently bears the burden of maintenance of the 1,600 coaches used on suburban section.
Sanpada workshop will cater to 150 coaches per month which is double the capacity of Matunga workshop that manages 75. Matunga workshop carries out the periodic overhauling (POH) of 75 local coaches along with 150 coaches of long distance trains.
At present, Sanpada is us-ed for stabling (parking) the tra-ins. The workshop once completed will be used for POH of 150 coaches in a month’s time. The coaches undergo POH after 18 months.
In the POH the entire body of a coach is cleaned and worn out part are replaced along with thorough check of machines within the coaches. “The additional workshop at Sanpada will go a long way in improving maintenance of trains,” said an official from CR on conditions of anonymity.
Recently, the trans-harbour line which runs with 12 coaches has to do with 9 car trains thus reducing the capacity by nearly 33 percent as coaches had to undergo extensive periodic overhaul and took a long time. The new workshop will be equipped with modern machinery. Also, Western Railway (WR) has been hesitant on transferring its six retrofitted rakes which can function on both the Alternate Current (AC) as well as Direct Current (DC) to CR as the latter could not suffice maintenance of these rakes with the existing workshop. Once the new workshop is functional, the CR is likely to get these six rakes.
Iram Siddique
