Consignment: Calcutta Metro’s first foreign-made rake

Origin: Dalian, China

Status: In transit

Calcutta Metro’s first foreign-made rake is sailing towards Chittagong on its way to the city from China.

The rake is scheduled to arrive at the Calcutta port on March 1. From there, it will be taken to Metro Railway’s Noapara maintenance base for trial runs, Metro officials said on Thursday.

The train manufactured by CNR Dalian Locomotive & Rolling Stock Co. of China is the first of 14 rakes to be shipped to Calcutta.

The prototype rake was loaded onto cargo vessel Han Zhang at Dalian port.

The vessel, which had set sail from Dalian on February 1, is now sailing towards Chittagong in Bangladesh after touching Singapore. It is scheduled to reach the Sandheads on February 28 and wait for the high tides.

At noon on March 1, when the high tide sets in and the water level rises, the vessel will enter Netaji Subhas Dock at Garden Reach.

The rake, like the existing Metro rail fleet, will have eight coaches.

“The train is being carried in two tiers of the vessel’s deck. Each tier has four coaches,” Metro spokesperson Indrani Banerjee said.

Once the cargo ship anchors at Calcutta port, special cranes will be used to lift the coaches and load them on to a container. “The coaches will be assembled in the port area to form the rake before a diesel engine pulls it to Noapara,” Banerjee said.

Metro will use Eastern Railway’s tracks to roll the new rake into its Noapara facility. The rake will be taken to Majerhat and from there to Chitpore, Belghoria and Dum Dum, before entering Noapara.

Calcutta Metro’s rakes, unlike other Metro trains, run on broad gauge tracks used by passenger and long-distance trains. “So, it’s easier to bring the rake into Noapara from the port using Eastern Railway’s tracks,” a Metro official said.

Engineers from China and Japan would be present when the coaches are unpacked and assembled into a train. Although CNS Dalian has manufactured the train, the components have been made by Toshiba of Japan.

“Once inside the maintenance base, the trials will begin,” Banerjee said.

Metro officials could not say when the first train would start commercial runs.

The 14 Chinese rakes will replace the snag-prone old non-AC Metro rakes and reduce the burden on the existing AC rakes.

The new rakes will also be used in the expanded network of Metro. The Noapara-Airport and Noapara-Baranagar-Dakshineswar lines are scheduled to be commissioned by next year.

The Chinese company is manufacturing 14 low-maintenance rakes for Calcutta Metro, breaking the monopoly of the Integral Coach Factory in Perambur, near Chennai, where the current snag-prone AC trains were built.

The trains will run at an average speed of 65kmph, 10kmph faster than the rakes in use. The aerodynamic design of the rakes will help them hit peak speed faster than the existing ones and

reduce energy consumption too, the Metro spokesperson said. The doors will be 20cm wider than that of the existing AC rakes.