Mumbai : After the services on Central Railway (CR) went for a toss during the morning peak hours on Friday, with more than 100 trains running with a delay of 30 minutes, CR officials have taken up the work of reducing the height of their Siemens trains (the lavender colour trains) on a war-footing basis to lift the caution order of 15 kmph between CST and Thane.
The trains will crawl at the speed of 15 kmph until either the height of the bridges at nine locations is increased or the height of the trains is reduced. As most of the bridges belong to the BMC, the bridges will have to be reconstructed, which will take a long time, apart from disrupting vehicular traffic. If the railway runs the trains with the 15 kmph caution order, roughly 20 trains will be canceled each hour every day, or will run with a delay of over 30 minutes as observed on Friday.
The officials are working on reducing the height of the Siemens trains to fit in the 4.27 meter margin by reducing the diameter of the wheels and the height of the insulator on which the pantograph in mounted on the rooftop of a train. While earlier the caution order to run the train at 15 kmph was for nine locations, it was relaxed to 30 kmph on four locations.
CR has a total of 55 Siemens trains run on the main line, of which 24 trains were measured for their height until Friday. The officials found that the height of five trains was exceeding the prescribed limit and this needed to be altered. Taking cue from the Integral Coach Factory (ICF), which is manufacturing the Bombardier locals with a smaller insulator for reducing its height, CR officials also decided to adopt the same method for Siemens trains.
Railway officials say that the diameter of the wheels will be reduced by 10 mm, while another 15 mm will be reduced by putting a smaller insulator. A senior railway official said, “We have ordered the smaller insulators and these will reach by Friday night. We will measure the remaining trains and simultaneously replace those found exceeding the height with a smaller insulator.”
Iram Siddique
