Hyderabad Metro Bringing in Lifestyle Changes

HMR Main Features

Rolling Stock

The coaches for the Metro are being supplied by Korean based Hyundai Rotem. Hyundai Rotem was chosen, based on considerations of technology and price as well as cost of maintenance, service and availability of spares. The basic train set is a 3-set Driver Motor Car – Trailer Car – Driver Motor Car (DMC-TC-DMC) set which can be extended to a 6-set Driver Motor Car – Trailer Car – Motor Car – Motor Car – Trailer Car – Driver Motor Car (DMC‐TC‐MC‐MC‐TC‐DMC) if needed. The trains feature Automatic Train Operation (ATO) and Automatic Train Protection. The coaches have a number of other safety features such as alarms for passenger emergencies and coach doors & closing, slip/slide protection for the train wheels, CCTV in all the cars, derailment guard on rails, provision for enabling platform screen doors, smoke & fire detectors and fire extinguishers in driver’s cab and saloon cars. The passenger coaches have longitudinal seats with maximum space for standing passengers and a dedicated space to accommodate wheelchairs for people with reduced mobility. The air-conditioned coaches have humidity control and LCD TVs which display the route positions dynamically, besides being a source of entertainment and other relevant information. The spring applied air‐release parking brake system allows energy regeneration during electro dynamic braking, resulting in a substantial saving of energy required to run trains. Each coach also has an electro‐pneumatic friction emergency brake system and a brake‐pipe controlled back‐up security brake system.

The emphasis of HMR is to make Hyderabad an eco-friendly city and at the same time make the project financially viable.

Train Depots

There will be three maintenance depots for stabling and maintenance of trains, engineering maintenance vehicles and other associated rail systems. The three depots will be located at Miyapur for Corridor 1, Falaknuma for Corridor 2 and Uppal for Corridor 3. They will be manned round the clock and will be equipped with all facilities needed for efficient and effective maintenance of rail system assets. Prominent among these facilities are covered & open stabling lines, an automatic train wash plant, inspection and workshop bays, wheel profiling lathe, infrastructure maintenance facilities, electrical & mechanical workshops and electronic repair shops. The main depot cum workshop is being built at Uppal where the overhaul and corrective maintenance facilities for whole fleet will be done. The other two depots have basic facilities for scheduled preventive maintenance and minor corrective maintenance. Every night when trains return from revenue services, they will be thoroughly washed at the train wash plant before being stabled on stabling lines. The maintenance includes a daily internal cleaning schedule to provide clean environment and ambience to passengers.

Before a train is inducted into service, it is inspected and checked thoroughly. The process involves visual inspection by team of engineers & technicians, successful completion of on-board test of vital safety systems and other comfort functions of trains and thorough analysis of data downloaded from the train.

Train Control and Signalling

HMR uses Communication Based Train Control (CBTC) to control trains, the first Metro in the country to do this. The heart of the system is the Operation Control Centre (OCC) at the Uppal depot which will monitor trains running on all the three corridors. The current locations of all trains running on the three corridors will be displayed and indicated at an overview display panel. The OCC will also have a backup control centre to take over operations in the event of any unforeseen emergency at the OCC. To further ensure fool-proof operations, should there be a highly unlikely failure of the CBTC system, a secondary detection system in the form of an Axle Counter based Fall-Back system is also being implemented.

The normal mode of operation of trains will be in Automatic Train Operation (ATO) mode. In this mode, the Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system continuously monitors safe train operation, and will stop the train in case of any emergency and initiates other action as needed. Besides this, Passenger Emergency Stop Plungers are provided on each platform and in the Station Control Room (SCR) to stop a train immediately in case of emergency. In necessary situations, the trains can also run in degraded or lower performance modes such as RM mode and Cut out mode.

All important signalling equipment on the stations, on the trains and the wayside such as the Computer Based Interlocking (CBI), wayside ATP have a high degree of redundancy built into them to avoid unnecessary disruption of services.