Bangalore Metro Yellow Line’s Train by CRRC Revealed
The first look of Bangalore Metro’s CRRC prototype train for the 19.143 km Yellow Line currently undergoing factory acceptance tests (FAT) in Nanjing, China has been has published by Moneycontrol.
This train is one of two trains that will be shipped from China as part of Bangalore Metro Phase 2‘s 36 train (216 coach) contract 4RS-DM awarded by Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd (BMRCL) in December 2019. The rest 34 trains will be assembled locally by Titagarh in West Bengal.
Out of 216 coaches, 126 coaches (21 trains of 6 coaches) will be deployed on the purple and green lines, alongside the existing 56 trains supplied by BEML. The rest 15 new trains with 6 coaches each will be deployed on the new Yellow Line (Reach 5) connecting RV Road – Electronic City – Bommasandra via 16 stations.
Like many prototype trains (Kochi and Mumbai’s MRS1 that I recollect), the Moneycontrol article states there are some rolling stock – signaling (by Siemens) interface issues currently being ironed out. This issue was also highlighted by a user on X (Twitter) a couple days ago: “My friends working in Siemens who r doing signalling for this line say crrc is not at all cooperating..”
The train’s design looks good to me and I can’t wait to see more images. The front U-shape locally reminds me of Noida Metro’s CRRC trains and it turned out to be better than the preliminary design published in 2019 by Chinese websites:
As shared last week when the Yellow Line’s final turnout was cast by Texmaco – commercial operations on this line continue to be terribly delayed due to unavailability of trains – a unique problem across India’s metro systems.
Per BMRCL’s MD who spoke to Moneycontrol, “the first two trains will reach Bengaluru from China by October“, which is a stretch to me given the ongoing interface issues (which although can be resolved locally) and historic shipping timeframe of trains and tunnel boring machines (TBMs) from China.
At this time I see this line opening up no sooner than Q3 (July-Sept) 2024 and wouldn’t be surprised if the line ends up opening in 2025.
Coming back to the train itself, this train is part of CRRC’s 7th and largest order for a metro project in India. Quick recap –
- Mumbai – 16 train-sets of 4 coaches for Line-1 (view design)
- Gurgaon – 12 train-sets of 3 coaches for Line-1 (view design)
- Navi Mumbai – 8 train-sets of 3 coaches for Line-1 (view design)
- Kolkata – 14 train-sets of 8 coaches for Line-1, Line-4 & Line-6 (view design)
- Noida – 19 train-sets of 4 coaches for Aqua Line (view design)
- Nagpur – 33 train-sets of 3 coaches for Orange & Aqua lines (view design)
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– TMRG
BMRC can take my 2 thumbs up for design and 2 thumbs down for delivery
I’m waiting to see how BMRCL will respond to this leak
Hopefully by share more photos!
Do you know when will Titagarh start delivering the coaches and what’s the plan in terms of prioritising yellow vs green line?
If 8-10 coaches are needed to start operations on yellow line then operations can’t start until titagrah delivers those coaches. Any insights on their delivery plan?
Any clue if this is how the purple line trains will also look or will they attempt to make it similar to the current rolling stock? Will be interesting to see a mix of different rakes on the same line.
Will the yellow line start operating from Dec 2023 ?
He clearly mentioned he expects it to operate no sooner than Q3/Q4 2024. PLs read before asking, if I may say.
No way. No less than March-2024
Do we have any Indian TBM manufacturer? Or all are imported from European/Australian & Chinese companies
Any plans by any Indian company to do the same?