Kolkata East-West Metro starts its underground trial runs till Sealdah station

KOLKATA: The East-West Metro started its continuous underground trial runs from Tuesday when a train travelled from the viaduct crossover at Subhas Sarobar into the underground tunnel leading to the Phoobagan station and subsequently, to Sealdah East. The idea was to check the hi-tech signalling system.

The 16km East-West Metro route goes underground from Phoolbagan till Howrah Maidan but so far, all the trial runs had been on the 5km elevated stretch between Sector V and Salt Lake stadium.Only once on May 31, a futuristic East-West Metro rake had run underground for a general checking of tracks, synchronization of platform screen doors with the train and other technicalities. From Tuesday, perpetual test runs will be held till services are extended from Salt Lake stadium to Phoolbagan. Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation (KMRC) is eyeing a November date for the Phoolbagan extension amid hectic preparations to unveil the inaugural Sector V-Stadium run in a month or so.
KMRC is implementing the Rs 8,575-crore East-West Metro project that will eventually join Howrah Maidan with Salt Lake’s Sector V via the Hooghly. Early on Tuesday, engineers of KMRC, drove one of the BEML-make trains out of the Salt Lake depot and steered it from the elevated viaduct to Subhas Sarovar where the tracks slide underground. The train was driven till the Sealdah East crossover and back, while the entire communication-based train control (CBTC) system was under scanner. Kolkata’s Line 2 will be Bengal’s first CBTC-enabled Metro that allows trains to ply at 80kmph.
“The project achieved a milestone as we drove the rake from Phoolbagan to Sealdah East, checking the CBTC system and found everything up to the mark. This is the proper beginning of E-W Metro’s series of underground tests,” A K Kundu, director, rolling stocks, KMRC, told TOI on Tuesday, after a successful trail run. The full-fledged underground trials that started on Tuesday and will go on till the 6km Sector V-Phoolbagan services start in November. When that happens, it will be the first time in 24 years that a new Metro starts underground operations in Kolkata. The last time was in 1995 when MG Road station was unveiled for the north-south line. From them on, all stations of the north-south Metro have been overhead, connected through elevated tracks.