Western Railway in a fix over how to run six AC trains it has got

Mumbai has received five 12car airconditioned AC locals but commuters are yet to experience them Reason the Western Railway has not been able to decide how and when to run them as the entire corridor is completely exhausted with the existing services With commuters opposing replacement of the services WR is in no mood to risk public ire and hence continues to be in a fixConsidering the situation the Railways has now decided to ask the Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation to get consultants who would review the existing situation and decide what to do with the trains While five of the AC locals have been put together using BHEL electricals the sixth one is an underslung made from Medha electricals The last train was sent to Mumbai on November 14 2019The WR runs a total of 1367 services on the ChurchgateDahanu section File picAccording to trade union leaders the decisionmaking process was getting affected as WR lacks a fulltime general manager and also because the divisional manager rapidly keeps changingSpeaking on condition of anonymity a railway official said As of today on the 120km ChurchgateDahanu stretch the WR runs 1367 services Of the total fleet of 101 trains 89 are in service at any given time Track paths are limited due to the absence of a dedicated suburban corridor Hence the number of services cannot be increased So the schedule for the AC trains has to be inserted in the existing one This might not let regular commuters take their daily trains at times they usually do because they would be replaced by AC ones with higher fares said a senior officialWhile five of the AC locals have been put together using BHEL electricals the sixth one is an underslung made from Medha electricals File picsCan the existing firstclass commuters board the AC train No The Railways has fixed a higher fare for the AC local for which they need to buy a special ticket This discourages many commuters Though the higher fare is justified they are blocking easy ways through which commuters could adapt to the AC local They could allow commuters board the AC local and then take the difference in fare from them onboard said a retired railway officialRail observer Akshay Marathe said As you can see a considerable amount of time has passed since the last train was sent to Mumbai It seems no one in the administration is willing to bite the bullet as a result of which trains worth crores of rupees are just rotting A similar situation might arise when Central Railway CR gets its fleet of six AC trainsThe idea is to run a combination of AC and regular locals but for this the AC coaches need to be technically compatible with the others The Railways need to work with different parties to get this done The other option is to introduce full AC trains but in that case commuters have to be allowed to board the trains with the usual first class tickets he addedFive trains have arrived but they are rotting in the name of trials This is only because of the indecisiveness and unpreparedness of the Railways as they are not able to decide how and when to run them They should have done their homework before the trains arrived said Shailesh Goyal zonal railway users consultative committee The Railways is just making up stories and nothing seems to be happening he addedRefuting the allegations WR chief public relations officer Ravinder Bhakar said We are already running two trains alternatively and the first one is under periodic overhaul The plan to introduce the third one has been finalised and it will be done this month itself We had to get permissions for trials of the swappable AC train which took some time but now it is in place The one with underslung bogies has to undergo intensive trials before it is put into serviceSpeaking to midday CR chief public relations officer Shivaji Sutar said that the AC locals were almost ready and they would be put into service on the transharbour corridorbefore MarchNov 30The day the last AC local was sent to Mumbai101No of trains in the existing service1367Total no of services in the Western Railway sectionAC locals reach MumbaiTrain 1 March 31 2016Train 2 February 20 2019 underslungTrain 3 May 17 2019Train 4 August 10 2019Train 5 September 10 2019Train 6 November 14 2019Train 7 November 30 2019 CRCatch up on all the latest Crime National International and Hatke news here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates