The Indian railways flagged off India’s first air-conditioned suburban local train in the city of Mumbai on 25th December 2017. The train made its maiden journey from the Borivali station to Churchgate station in South Mumbai. The train is operated by the Western Railway (WR). The train set for its maiden journey at 10:30 AM on Monday 25th December 2017.
The train was flagged off by Maharashtra’s Education Minister Vinod Tawde, Mumbai BJP chief Ashish Shelar, Members of Parliament from BJP Kirit Somaiya, Gopal Shetty and Western Railway General Manager Anil Kumar Gupta. The train is built at a cost of 54 crores in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. The trial runs of the train were conducted on the Western Railway (WR) corridor. After 65 trial runs the services were started for the public. However, initially the train was scheduled to run on the Central Railway (CR) corridor but later it was decided to run on the Western Railway (WR).
Officially the train started its services from 1st January 2018. The train makes six trips daily (12 services per day) running between Borivali-Churchgate stations with stoppages at Dadar, Bandra, Mumbai Central and Andheri stations. The purpose of launching this train is to bring respite to the passengers (especially for the office going passengers) from the humid weather conditions. The train is equipped with new security features such as emergency talk system for passengers. The train also includes the automatic door closure facility. In case of an emergency, the passengers can communicate with the guard or the motorman. The approximate travel time from Borivali station to Churchgate station is 45 minutes. The fare of the ticket is 1.2 times the first class ticket. Barring Saturday and Sunday the train operates for five days from Monday to Friday. Weekends will be used for the maintenance of the train.
