In what can be termed good news for train commuters, soon they will be able to board a local train between Mumbai and Pune.
According to Mid-Day, the Central Railway (CR), in a letter, has requested the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Chennai to design a 12-car train with higher braking powers to enable it to run smoothly in the hilly terrain between Mumbai and Pune.
A senior CR official told the leading daily, “We’ve requested ICF to turn out a 12-car EMU train with parking brakes on 32 wheels, instead of the existing 16 wheels, for various mandatory trials like emergency braking distance, coupler force and controllability in the southeast section between Karjat and Lonavala. The railway board has been insisting on early trials of this with the research, design and standards organisation, the technical consultant of Indian Railways. Since ICF is yet to manufacture six trains for Central Railway, we have requested them to manufacture one with enhanced brakes for CSMT-Pune local trials.”
At present local trains run between 99.72 km distance of CSMT and Karjat and the 64 km distance between Lonavala and Pune. The railway distance between CSMT and Pune in 192 km. But currently, there are no local train services between Karjat and Lonavala, at a distance of 28 km, the reason behind it is that the region is mountainous.