Eight-coach trains introduced on Red line: Delhi Metro

New Delhi: Delhi Metro on Tuesday introduced two eight-coach trains, converted from the existing fleet of six-carriage trains, for passenger services on its Red line to boost the carrying capacity on the old corridor.

The Red line connects the Rithala station in Delhi and the Shaheed Sthal (New Bus Adda) station in Ghaziabad.

"The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation has introduced its first-ever set of two eight-coach trains, which have been converted from the existing fleet of 39 six-coach trains, for passenger services on the Red Line (Line-1 -- Rithala to Shaheed Sthal New Bus Adda) from today," it said in a statement.

With this induction, all the trains on the line will be stopping near the far end of the platforms. This head stopping (trains stopping near the end of the platform) will also be more convenient for the passengers waiting for the trains, officials said.

All the 78 additional coaches being added to these 39 trains on the Red line have been procured from Bharat Earth Movers Limited (BEML). These coaches will increase the carrying capacity of the Red line (Line-1), which was extended up to the Shaheed Sthal station in 2019 with a total length of nearly 34 kilometres.

The conversion of the six-coach trains into eight-coach trains on the Red line is being done in a graded manner to ensure that there is no impact on the regular passenger services and is likely to be completed by 2024, the statement said.

The Red line is the oldest and one of the most significant corridors of the DMRC network in terms of passenger utilisation (around 4.7 lakh per day at present) with four existing interchange stations -- Welcome, Kashmere Gate, Inderlok and Netaji Subhas Place. Two more stations -- Pulbangash and Pitampura -- on the line will also become interchange stations after the completion of the fourth phase, the statement said.

Last year, the conversion of all the six-coach trains into eight-coach trains on the Yellow line (Line-2 -- Samaypur Badli to HUDA City Centre) and the Blue line (Line-3/4 -- Dwarka Sector-21 to Noida Electronic City/Vaishali) was completed successfully by adding additional coaches to their remaining fleets of six-coach trains. These lines, which were initially made operational under the first phase, were built on broad gauge, having the provision of running trains of up to eight-coach formation.

The remaining corridors of the Delhi Metro network including the Airport Express line, which were constructed in the second and third phases, were built on standard gauge, having the provision of running trains of up to six-coach formation, the statement said.

The first six-coach train service on the Delhi Metro network was also introduced on the Red line in 2013. The Delhi Metro currently has a fleet of 336 train sets comprising 176 six-coach trains, 138 eight-coach trains and 22 four-coach trains across all its corridors (excluding Rapid Metro, Gurugram and Noida Metro), the DMRC said.