Two Kochi metro rakes arrived here on Tuesday from Alstom's manufacturing unit in Andhra Pradesh, taking the total number of metro trains to 18.
The remaining seven rakes are expected to arrive in a year. Each of the new three-coach trains will commence trial runs in the Aluva-Maharajas Ground metro corridor shortly, during non-operational hours. They will join the fleet of operational trains when the metro is extended by 5 km up to Thykoodam located between Vyttila and Pettah, in June 2019., KMRL sources said.
The total number of 25 trains, each able to carry a crush load of 950 people, will operate when the metro reaches Pettah, a distance of 1.5 km from Thykoodam by December 2020.
In the meantime, metro officials have directed the civil contracting firm engaged in civil works in the Maharajas Ground-Ernakulam Junction Railway Station-Manorama Junction corridor to speed up girder-launching work on the viaduct so that laying of tracks, signal and telecommunication systems can follow. “We have told the firm to beef up manpower and to execute the work round-the-clock,” DMRC sources said.
