Mumbai: Central Railway gets extra AC train but won’t increase services

There are plans to introduce 238 new Mumbai-customised air-conditioned locals eventually. File pic

Despite the arrival of one more air-conditioned train on Tuesday, Central Railway (CR) will not be increasing its AC local services immediately due to public opposition and glitches in its existing fleet. The new train will be used as a backup.

Following sustained complaints, Mumbai railway officials have also realised that the existing fleet of trains is plagued by technical issues, from a faulty air-conditioning system to water leakages to glitches in the door-closing mechanism. CR has also summoned a team from the manufacturers - the Chennai-based Integral Coach Factory - to iron out all the snags.

Regular AC train commuters get upset when their services are cancelled. "In the first place, CR is not increasing services. In fact, they often cancel existing ones, which inconveniences commuters who pay the steep AC train fare," Ravikant Mehra, a commuter, said.

Railway officials said that the AC train services are cancelled and replaced with regular services only when technical snags that make them inoperational are reported. "We have taken up the issue of snags in AC trains with the manufacturers and looking to solve them," an official said.

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While CR runs 56 AC services, with four trains and one spare, excluding the recent arrival, Western Railway (WR) operates 79 such services, with six trains in use and another on the way.

"There is one more AC train waiting to be inducted into the fleet on WR with 10 more services soon, the details of which are being finalised," an official said.

Though the existing fleet of 13 trains is being fixed, there are long-term plans to get 238 new Mumbai-customised AC locals - 47 under MUTP-3 and 191 under MUTP-3A. They will have an inbuilt infotainment system, CCTVs and better acceleration.

Mumbai's AC locals have been a political tool since August 2022, with NCP president Sharad Pawar calling for their complete withdrawal from the city and restoration of regular services for working-class commuters. The first AC local train service in Mumbai was started on December 25, 2017, on WR.

56
No of AC train services operated by CR