People of Chennai may see the Metro train being tested on the elevated corridor from Koyambedu to Alandur in February.
By September, the stretch, comprising seven stations, might be thrown open for public, according to officials of Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL).
Chennai Metro Rail, built at a cost of Rs. 14,600 crore, will run across a 45-km stretch criss-crossing the city; half of this network will be on an elevated platform and the other half underground.
It will have two corridors – one linking Washermanpet to Airport and the other, Chennai Central to St. Thomas Mount.
Earlier, CMRL decided to conduct the trial run for Stage 1 of the project from Koyambedu to St. Thomas Mount, a distance of 11 km. But owing to delays in the civil work, they will now carry out this run only between Koyambedu to Alandur.
The first train, manufactured in Sao Paulo in Brazil, arrived in July and its test run was carried out on the 800 metre test-track located within the Koyambedu depot last November. Subsequently, two trains reached the city in the last week of November.
According to officials, after the trial run, tracks and trains will have to go through several safety tests. There is also a requirement to test the trains for a fixed time period. Then, officials of Research Design and Standards Organisation (RDSO), the research wing of Indian Railways, will run the trains at nearly 90km/h, 10 per cent more than their maximum sectional speed and recheck the strength of trains, another CMRL official said.
Nearly 50 per cent of the overall Metro Rail work has been completed. The elevated corridor is approaching the final stages of construction and a third of the work in the underground section is over. Signalling and electrical work is under progress on the elevated corridor.
