Kolkata: East-West Metro rake rolls in under Sealdah, busiest surburban rly station

KOLKATA: History was made on Saturday as the first rake rolled into the Metro station coming up 17m below Sealdah, the busiest suburban railway station, paving the way for the East-West corridor’s 2.3km extension beyond Phoolbagan. When this seventh station is added to East-West Metro by the year-end, commuters will be able to travel 10km in 20 minutes. Continuous trails should start towards the end of August.
The corridor currently operates along the 7km between Sector V and Phoolbagan. It will eventually run 16km till Howrah Maidan. “We aim to commission the Sealdah extension by December,” Metro Railway general manager Manoj Joshi said on Saturday.

Just before 3pm, Joshi, along with Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation (KMRC) MD Manas Sarkar and senior officials, boarded the rake at Phoolbagan. The BEML-make train sped at 65kmph till the crossover, but slowed to 15kmph along the last 300m to the Seadah platform since the signalling system at the station’s mouth is still in its nascent stage
“It’s a milestone for us. This is the first time a Metro train has chugged into a railway station in Kolkata,” said KMRC’s director, projects, N C Karmali.
“The other railway station along the East-West corridor is Howrah station, which houses the country’s deepest Metro station at 30m,” said KMRC chief engineer Biswanath Dewanjee. But trials at Howrah station and the rest of the corridor, from Sealdah till the Howrah Maidan terminal, won’t begin until next year.
The integrated trials till Sealdah, a pre-requisite for getting mandatory clearance from the Independent Safety Assessor (ISA), will go on for three months, following which Metro Railway will apply to Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS) for its nod.
Metro Railway is confident the Sealdah extension will add meaningful rider count to the under-used East-West line. “Sealdah is a suburban railway hub with 8 lakh to 10 lakh daily passenger count in normal times. At least 40,000 commuters should use East-West Metro, which will take them to Sector V at a very low cost,” said Joshi.
The authorities are bracing for much hard work in the run up to the commissioning. Along with the trials inside the east-bound tunnel, the west-bound one will continue to function as a shaft (opening) for winding up tunnel boring machine (TBM) Urvi, which finished digging on May 15.