Reaching yet another milestone, the first Metro rake was taken through the stretch below the Hooghly today.
It was for the first time in India that a Metro rake was operated under the river bed. Once commercially operational, the corridor will link Howrah Maidan to Esplanade. The day, for the officials of Kolkata Metro Railway, was historical. Leaving no stones unturned to make the moment memorable, the implementing agency had made preparations in full swing. A rake MR612 was taken from Sealdah, last Sunday.
However, after a halt of two days, the rake was taken ahead through the stretch of riverbed till Howrah Maidan. To celebrate the moment, chairman of KMRCL, P Uday Kumar Reddy, managing director of KMRCL, HN Jaiswal, along with other officials accompanied the motorman Shiv Kumar through the journey.
A second rake MR613 was brought to Howrah Maidan later. According to Mr Reddy, the test runs in the 4.8km stretch between Howrah Maidan and Esplanade are to be conducted for the next six to seven months. As a lot of safety parameters and testing of various systems are involved, the authorities are calling it ‘test runs.’
“The trial runs would be conducted after six to seven months of test runs when testing of various systems would be successfully done,” informed the chairman.
The test, according to the MD of KMRCL, is being started so that by the time Bowbazar stretch overcomes the hurdles, no further period is wasted in conducting the testing. “If the test runs were conducted after the completion of Bowbazar, it would postpone the operations further.
Therefore, while Bowbazar stretch is being readied, test runs would be carried out simultaneously to save time,” informed Mr Jaiswal.