To ease rush,plans for double-decker trains

“In 2011-12 fiscal,five to six more AC double decker outstation trains will be made. We will also make more non-AC double decker trains,which are still in use.”

KBL Mittal,Director General and ex-officio Manager of RDSO,told reporters in Lucknow, “We will prepare a design of the local and present it to the Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation (MRVC) and both the railways and see how they accept the plan after testing its feasibility. Having a two-storey local is better than augmenting locals from 15 to 18 coaches,” added Mittal.

Incidentally MRVC has sent a proposal to the organisation to study the feasibility of 18-coach trains. Longer local trains have issues like dispersal of commuters,as well as change in infrastructure like re-spacing of signalling,length of platforms,change in track alignment.

Mittal said every double decker coach had as additional 30% capacity but in local trains this won’t be so as the doors would be wider and thus capacity increase would be “less than 30%.”

The DG said the present entries and exits would have to be increased as the 30-second halt would not be sufficient to let enough people enter and exit. Also the staircases would have to be wider to facilitate better and faster entry-exit of Mumbai’s suburban traffic. The fully AC double decker train undergoing tests has 11 coaches and has been manufactured by the Railway Coach Factory,Kapurthala. The seats of each coach has increased from 72 to 105.

Ten years back,the Sinhagad Express between Mumbai and Pune was a double decker train.

On WR,the Flying Ranee from Mumbai Central to Surat and Mumbai-Valsad Express,have a few double decker coaches.

As in other long-distance trains,passenger safety to minimise danger in case of a crash,or crashworthiness,will be looked into in double decker local trains too. If a train crashes against any solid object,the internal damage is made minimal by buffering the end of each coach with rubber to absorb shock,and adding anti-telescoping features.

After RDSO nod for AC local design,next move awaited
The design of a proposed air conditioned coach for the suburban section has been approved by the RDSO Lucknow,but it is waiting for the MRVC,the Central Railway and Western Railway to take it from the blueprint stage to implementation.

Over a year ago,Rajkamal Rao,MM,Railway Board had told The Indian Express that the Board had sent the design to RDSO for approval. RDSO has approved the design with some modifications.

AK Gupta,Executive Director(Passenger services and EMU),said the project has a few challenges like the door.

“Unless the doors are closed,suburban services cannot have AC coaches. The number of commuters per coach will have to be brought down by at least 150 from 500 now,” Gupta said. RDSO officials were of the view there is a need to increase fares that have remained steady since 2006.

The increase in fuel prices had led to hike in road transport fares,which may attract a heavy passenger load to trains,they said adding thus railways should consider a fare hike. During discussion on the need of AC coaches for Mumbai,Gupta said the economics as well as population growth projection had to be borne in mind.

KBL Mittal,Director General and ex-officio Manager of RDSO,said,“Plying AC trains full-time is not an easy task and may not be feasible in view of the dense commuter load. But once Metro and Monorail start plying,railways can deduce the actual situation with regard to commuting capacity and train services utilisation. It is up to the Railways and the Maharashtra government to decide AC coach induction.”

Around ten years ago an AC coach was made by the WR at the Mahalaxmi workshop converting one at an additional cost of Rs 17 lakh. It was run between Mumbai Central and Bandra for the media. The project was abandoned as certain permissions were not obtained. Another proposal to run an AC train on CR between CST and Kalyan,failed as it didn’t get permission from the Railway Board. A hue and cry had also been raised then that there are not enough trains for the common man and the railways was wasting resources on the elite.

Around the same time,Nikhilesh Jain,the then DRM of WR had proposed to convert all first class compartments into AC as a value-added service. That proposal too did not see the light of the day.