The much-awaited trial run of the underground Metro 3 (Colaba-Bandra-SEEPZ) will begin soon with the arrival of the prototype rake in August. Ashwini Bhide, Managing Director of the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Limited (MMRCL), announced it on Saturday via a tweet. She also visited the train receiving facility at Sariput Nagar, and reviewed the progress of the tunnel and stations with project director Subodh Gupta and other MMRCL officials. She said that the trial run would be conducted inside the 3-km underground Marol-Maroshi station, and a temporary parking set-up nearby.
MMRCL, which is the project implementing authority, said the trial run is held to test the prototype train set on the underground network and gauge technical faults, check the speed, braking and other dynamic system operations. It’s only after the trial run that the rest of the fleet will be manufactured with needed rectifications. The run will also test oscillation and emergency break distance.
The prototype rake manufactured in Sri city, Andhra Pradesh, will cover 2,000 km during the trial run, as per the MMRCL. The second rake will arrive within two months of the first one’s delivery in August.
The manufacturing of 31 train sets of eight coaches each for the underground corridor commenced at Alstom’s factory in Sri city in 2019 and delivery was scheduled in 2020. Even though the prototype rake was ready, its delivery was held up owing to uncertainty on the issue of the car shed as the previous government wanted to shift it to Kanjurmarg.
The train’s passenger carrying capacity is 2,350 (estimated at six passengers per square metre) and it will operate on 25 KV AC traction supply. The stainless steel cars will have four doors on each side.
