A senior official of Central Railway has said that due to the lack of enough stabling lines, the local trains that run between Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) and Kalyan, Titwala, Badlapur and beyond, cannot be augmented to 15 cars from the current count of 12, according to an Indian Express report.
What are stabling lines?
Stabling lines are where trains are parked when they are not in operation. As of now, the Central Railway has only two rakes of 15 cars each, which carries out 22 trips daily.
An official said that the Kalyan goods yard and platform number 7 at CSMT have two stabling lines. However, they are not enough for the augmentation of trains to 15 coaches.
The carsheds that are currently present have already been augmented for trains which were converted into 12 cars from nine, as per a senior official from CSMT. They added that any further expansion would require shifting of tracks and points among other things. Such a task is difficult, especially in Mumbai. The official also pointed out that there are many cases of encroachment of land near railway tracks and depots. “So augmentation of trains will be possible only with the development of new depots/car sheds,” the official said.
Besides this, the Central Railway is also unable to increase or add new services as trains are running every three-and-half minutes and the present tracks have heavy congestion as they also support long distance trains.
The CR operates 1,810 local services daily on weekdays and serves nearly 37 lakh passengers.
The CR official has said that until new or additional tracks are laid down, no news services can be introduced. The Central Railway introduced 36 new services of AC local trains in February 2022. However, non-AC services of locals have not been increased in the recent past.
The Western Railway has augmented 49 local train services to 15 cars from 12, which resulted in 25% more carrying capacity in each case.