The Western Railway (WR) has decided to replace 20 12-car locals with 15-car trains on the slow corridor between Andheri and Virar in December.
This development comes as the overcrowding in trains is expected with railways resuming daily tickets and passes for fully vaccinated people. With this, the overcrowding is likely to ease a bit. The WR has been running 46 15-car services on the corridor since April 2021. Now, WR will be able to run 66 15-car slow services on this stretch.
It will also increase the carrying capacity by 25 per cent per rake. The carrying capacity of a 15-car local is 3,000 as against 2,400 of the 12-car train.
WR spent INR 70 crores on extending the length of 27 platforms on 14 stations to accommodate longer trains which made it possible to run 15-car services between Andheri and Virar on slow corridor.
Meanwhile, it is not feasible to run 15-car rakes on the slow corridor from Andheri towards south Mumbai owing to lack of space at the stations to extend the platforms.
WR will also introduce eight more services of AC train in a couple of days. Thus, total number of AC services on WR will increase to 20.
WR introduced 15-car services between Dadar and Virar in 2009. On January 28, 2011, it extended the services till Churchgate after extending platforms 3 and 4. The 15-car trains, however, do not halt between Dadar and Churchgate due to shorter length of platforms.
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