An exclusive coach-manufacturing factory is under construction at Tada in Andhra Pradesh to make boggies for four-car trains for the ongoing Chennai Metro Rail project.
Senior officials of Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL) told Deccan Chronicle that France based Alstom Ltd, which had won the contract for supplying coaches for CMRL, would start manufacturing coaches at the Alstom Rolling Stock Factory at Sri City in Andhra Pradesh soon.
CMRL officials, along with experts from Alstom, visited the factory early this month. Civil work for the car body shell and fitting sheds has been completed and machines for the welding school meant for training the welders are also being readied, CMRL officials said.
The factory would be more of an assembling unit with parts of coaches being shipped from abroad and put together before being dispatched as finished coaches and trains to Chennai.
Alstom would manufacture 132 coaches, which account for the 33 four-car metro trains, at this factory. The first coach would tentatively be rolled out of Tada factory by January 2014, CMRL officials said.
Alstom would also ship the first consignment of nine four-car trains required for the Koyambedu-St Thomas Mount stretch of CMRL from its production unit in Brazil before the Tada factory rolls out coaches, officials said.
The shipment from Brazil would also be utilised for testing at the yard under construction in Koyambedu and also for the trial run, they informed.
With four-car trains being operated every 3.5 minutes, as many as 24,968 passengers are expected to be carried every hour in corridor-I, connecting Washermanpet and airport via LIC, Teynampet, Guindy and OTA by 2016.
The capacity is estimated at 24,324 per hour with four-car trains being operated every three minutes in corridor-II connecting Central and St Thomas Mount via Egmore, Kilpauk, Shenoy Nagar, Koyambedu, Ashok Nagar and Alandur.