Mumbai's first AC local likely to run on December 25 or January 1

Mumbai: If you thought that you might be able to take your family for a joy ride aboard the AC train on a weekend any time soon, you are sorely mistaken. The one and only AC train will be sent for maintenance on both Saturday and Sunday, said railway officials. This is mainly being done as officials said that they couldn’t predict what would happen to the train, once it actually runs on tracks. The train is likely to run on Christmas day or by New Years.

The unpredictability of the train has led to the officials being in a fix and has voluntarily revised the usual protocol of maintenance of a local train by deciding that the train will not run on the weekend, once it starts running. An official said, “The train is unpredictable, not sure as to what it will do, hence we will not run the train on weekends as we want to give it a thorough look over during the weekend in most Mahalaxmi car shed.”

The trains has been undergoing trials since a year-and-a-half on both Central and Western railway but since the train is the first AC in Mumbai it has thrown up unexpected challenges for the railways. An official said, “At first, the train’s temperature would not go beyond a certain celsius, which in turn made the train very unpleasant to travel in as it was very cold.”

The train is likely to break down a lot of times, when it hits the railway tracks, an official said, “The train is going to be late, it will break down as it has electrical issues along with a million other problems. We don’t want the facility to become a failure instead of a success.”