DELHI Metro on Tuesday introduced two eight-coach trains, converted from the existing fleet of six-carriage trains, for passenger services on its Red line to boost the carrying capacity on the old corridor.

The Red line connects the Rithala station in Delhi and the Shaheed Sthal (New Bus Adda) station in Ghaziabad.

“The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation has introduced its first-ever set of two eight-coach trains, which have been converted from the existing fleet of 39 six-coach trains, for passenger services on the Red Line (Line-1 -- Rithala to Shaheed Sthal New Bus Adda) from today,” it said in a statement.

With this induction, all the trains on the line will be stopping near the far end of the platforms. This head stopping (trains stopping near the end of the platform) will also be more convenient for the passengers waiting for the trains, officials said.

All the 78 additional coaches being added to these 39 trains on the Red line have been procured from Bharat Earth Movers Limited (BEML). These coaches will increase the carrying capacity of the Red line (Line-1), which was extended up to the Shaheed Sthal station in 2019 with a total length of nearly 34 kilometres.

The conversion of the six-coach trains into eight-coach trains on the Red line is being done in a graded manner to ensure that there is no impact on the regular passenger services and is likely to be completed by 2024, the statement said.

The Red line is the oldest and one of the most significant corridors of the DMRC network in terms of passenger utilisation (around 4.7 lakh per day at present) with four existing interchange stations -- Welcome, Kashmere Gate, Inderlok and Netaji Subhas Place.