Western Railway fixes snag in rakes’ software

The Western Railway (WR) has worked out the snags in the Bombardier rakes for now, after a series of failures on the line on June 12, when eight of them had failed due to a fault in the inbuilt system. This had caused 100 cancellations on the line and even more delays.

The Bombardier-make trains, which are a part of the Mumbai Urban Transport Project II (MUTP), had shut down after the trains had shut themselves down due to continuous power fluctuation. The Bombardier-make trains had a system where the train would shut down and isolate its system when there is tripping due to power fluctuation, in the frequency of three times in three minutes.

This, said railway officials has been corrected by changes in the software. “The software in the Bombardier trains are made in such a way that the trains shuts down after the power trips for more than three times in three minutes. Now, the change has been made that it will shut down only when the power trips for more than 10 times in 10 minutes,” said an official.

These changes are key in running new rolling stock like the Bombardier on the line it is meant to run on. “There is virtually no system like Mumbai suburban in any other part of the country. So there are a lot of problems that it faces, like the tripping most seen in the monsoon and the summer. When electricity, that too of 25,000 volts, comes in contact with water this is bound to happen and similarly in summer, the city’s humidity and heat too plays havoc on our power grids,” added the official.

The Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation (MRVC), which is an agency created especially for Mumbai, had procured the 72 rakes from the Canadian company-Bombardier Inc. These trains have been purchased at a cost of Rs 3,041 crore, whose delivery began from March 15 last year.