Metro rail to be tested on elevated corridor by end of this month
Metro Rail will be tested by end of this month on the elevated corridor
from Koyambedu to Alandur.By September, the stretch, comprising seven stations,
might be thrown open for public, according to officials of Chennai Metro Rail
Limited (CMRL).
Chennai Metro Rail, built at a cost of
Rs. 14,600 crore, will run across a 45-km stretch criss-crossing the city; half
of this network will be on an elevated platform and the other half underground.It
will have two corridors – one linking Washermanpet to Airport and the other,
Chennai Central to St. Thomas Mount. Earlier, CMRL decided to conduct the trial
run for Stage 1 of the project from Koyambedu to St. Thomas Mount, a distance
of 11 km. But owing to delays in the civil work, they will now carry out this
run only between Koyambedu to Alandur.
The first train, manufactured in Sao
Paulo in Brazil, arrived in July and its test run was carried out on the 800
metre test-track located within the Koyambedu depot last November.
Subsequently, two trains reached the city in the last week of November. After
the trial run, tracks and trains will have to go through several safety tests.
There is also a requirement to test
the trains for a fixed time period. Then, officials of Research Design and
Standards Organisation (RDSO), the research wing of Indian Railways, will run
the trains at nearly 90km/h, 10 per cent more than their maximum sectional
speed and recheck the strength of trains. Nearly 50 per cent of the overall
Metro Rail work has been completed.
The elevated corridor is approaching
the final stages of construction and a third of the work in the underground
section is over. Signalling and electrical work is under progress on the
elevated corridor.
