Millions of people in Mumbai do travel with the city local trains everyday. The commute is such a mundane part of their lives that they do not have any chance to stop even to think how an outsider would feel about the chaos that they have internalized over years of torturous experience. To its relief, Indian Railways is now planning to introduce “Train 18 sisters” for Mumbai local passengers in the coming year. These are new air-conditioned local trains to counter the hot and humid climate of the city.
Recently made in the Integral Coach Factory (ICF), Chennai, these Mumbai AC local trains have widely been called as the little sisters to the Train-18.
As per sources, after this, eight more will be made in the next financial year of 2019-2020. Shubhranshu, the Principal Chief Mechanical Engineer of ICF said, “The production designs are ready and ICF will manufacture 8 new Mumbai AC local train rakes in the new financial year.”
According to ICF, the train will be able to accommodate 116 passengers at against 1028 earlier. These new Mumbai AC locals will accelerate and decelerate faster and so it is less time consuming too. These are being designed to attain maximum speeds of 110 kmph. Made on the Train 18 platform, it has the same bogies and all its electrical equipments will be underslung, leaving more space on board for passengers, like Train 18. Over the next few months, it is going to be tested extensively.
Here are some attractive features of the new Mumbai AC local trains :
* Comfortable seats and broad-sleek luggage racks
* CCTV camreras in all coaches for a close surveillance
* Stainless steel handrests, screwless interior paneling finish and its coaches with stainless steel body, are designed with straight sidewalls
* Sealed gangways for easy passenger movement
* Emergency alarm and passenger talk back
*Automatic and wide sliding doors
* Rubberised, anti-skid flooring
* GPS-based Passenger Information System and announcement system
* Regenerative brake that ensures 35% electrical energy savings
The automatic door – feature of the train will make sure its halting-duration at each station would be increase by few more seconds. But this certainly is not going to cause any delay, since its faster acceleration and deceleration system will make up all the spared time.
At present, the Mumbai suburban networks, under Indian Railways, are only on AC local. Gradually with addition of new trains, people will be more acquainted to it, forgetting about their personal transport systems.
