Thaindian News

New Delhi, June 27 (IANS) The Delhi Metro has created another record by lifting four coaches with a crane and placing them on the track of an elevated corridor of the upcoming Central Secretariat-Badarpur line, an official said Sunday.
After being lifted by a crane, the coaches were lowered on a ramp which helped them glide towards the track at the Lajpat Nagar station.

The coaches will be used for trial runs, starting in the first week of July, on a section of the the line that will be completed by September.

The operation started at 11 p.m. Saturday night and ended at 4.10 a.m. Sunday, a Metro official said.

The coaches, weighing about 42 tonnes each, were lifted and lowered by a 270 tonne crane that was equipped with a special adjustable boom that helped in their quick stabilisation on the track.

This was the first time in the country when standard gauge Metro rail coaches were lifted by cranes and stabilised on tracks with a slope. For this purpose the coaches were fitted with special lifting lugs to facilitate quick and smooth lifting by the crane, the official said.

“Meticulous planning was done for over six months to implement the operation smoothly. All Cargo, a specialised agency, was roped in to carry out the operation. About 400 Metro staffers worked round-the-clock to implement the operation successfully,” a Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) spokesperson said.

The operation was a great engineering achievement as the coaches were stabilised on a gradient (slope) of about 4 percent.

The coaches were lifted and lowered on the track as there was no other way to bring them to the station.

Trial runs on the 20.16-km Central Secretariat-Badarpur standard guage line will start in phases from the first week of July and go on till the line is opened to the public in September, ahead of the October 3-14 Commonwealth Games.

The coaches were brought on trailers from the Mundka Standard Guage depot and lowered on the ramp between Jangpura and Lajpat Nagar stations.

The trial runs will begin after July 5 on the Central Secretariat-Lajpat Nagar section after the signalling and other works are completed on the 9-km section, the official section.

In the normal course, the coaches would have been kept at the Sarita Vihar depot, located in the Central Secretariat-Badarpur line and then brought into the section for trials.

However, as the construction of the depot and other portions of the line is taking time, it was decided by the Metro to begin early trials on sections of the line that are complete, the official said.