Metro train to take the road

For the first time, Metro coaches would be brought to an under-construction line to be assembled into a train, HT Correspondent reports.

For the first time, Metro coaches would be brought to an under-construction line to be assembled into a train.

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On the midnight of June 26, four standard-gauge coaches (each 22 metres long, 2.9 metres wide and weighing 42 tonnes) would be brought on trailers to Lajpat Nagar, lifted by two cranes (lifting capacity of 250 tonnes each) and placed on the elevated Metro track where the Metro engineers would put them together with couplers and convert it into a train.

Built in Bengaluru, these coaches are currently parked at Mundka, on the Inderlok-Mundka line, which is the only other standard gauge Metro line besides the 20-km long Central Secretariat-Badarpur line.

With certain sections of the Central Secretariat-Badarpur corridor still being constructed and tracks being laid, the DMRC has been forced to take the Metro coaches to the track by road and put them together.

"The nine-km underground section of this line, from Central Secretariat to Lajpat Nagar, is ready. Its track and signalling trials are scheduled to begin in the first week of July. As the work on this corridor between Sarita Vihar — where the depot is to come up — and Lajpat Nagar is still on, it was not possible to assemble the train at the depot and roll it to the underground section,” a DMRC spokesperson said.

The construction of the elevated part of this corridor line had to be halted after a pillar collapsed at Zamroodpur village near Greater Kailash in July 2009.

Following the accident, the work remained suspended on the elevated part for several months.