Two Metro rakes from China reached the city port on Saturday.

“The coaches were unloaded from a vessel at the port on Sunday. They will be assembled near a railway yard at the port and taken to the Noapara maintenance base by a diesel engine provided by the Eastern Railway,” said a Metro official.

The rakes, manufactured by CNR Dalian Locomotive & Rolling Stock Co. in China, left China in the last week of December, said a Metro official.

“It will take around a month for the rakes to be inducted into the operational fleet,” the official said.

The two new rakes will be used on the north-south route (Blue Line).

Before Saturday, two Dalian rakes had reached Calcutta in May 2023.

The Railway Board had first contracted the firm to build 14 rakes for Calcutta Metro in May 2015. The rakes were supposed to have been delivered by October 2018.

But a design approval from the Research Design and Standards Organisation (RDSO) of the central government delayed the process, said sources in the railways.

The first of the 14 rakes arrived at the Calcutta port on March 3, 2019, breaking the monopoly of the Integral Coach Factory, the sole supplier to Calcutta Metro.

The Chinese rakes were then billed as the best bet to
replace the snag-prone old rakes and reduce the burden on the existing air-conditioned rakes.

But it was inducted into the commercial fleet after four years, in March 2023.

Railway officials attributed the delay to pending clearances because of Covid.

In the meantime, the carrier shifted its focus to the indigenous Medha rakes — the new lot of trains built at the Integral Coach Factory in Perambur, near Chennai.

The Blue Line now has a fleet of 29 trains — 13 Medha rakes, 13 made at BHEL and three Dalian rakes. The entire fleet is air-conditioned.