Pictures: Hanoi and Saigon set the metro routes in motion

[Viet]

From VNexpress

The first of a total 10 trains for the Nhon-Hanoi Railway Station route set sail from France’s Dunkirk Port on September 9. The shop docked at Malaysia’s Klang Port en route to Vietnam.

On the morning of October 18, the ship arrived at the Nam Hai Dinh Vu Port in Hai Phong. Nguyen Cao Minh, head of the Hanoi Metropolitan Railway Management Board (MRB), said the Covid-19 pandemic has affected the design and production processes of the train. However, with hectic, concerted efforts all parties, the train was transported to Vietnam a week earlier than expected, Minh said.

Hundreds of workers with specialized equipment unload a train car at the Nam Dinh Hai Vu Port. After four hours, the unloading at the port was completed. The train cars were placed on special trucks that would drive them to Hanoi. The transportation unit discuss the plan before starting out on the 200-km ride from the port to Hanoi. Since the vehicles were only allowed to run between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., it took two days to move all the train parts. At 10:15 p.m. on October 18, the train left the port with navigation and other support from the traffic force and transportation unit. Tractors with 80-wheel trailers and a tonnage of 250 tons were used. The train passes Hanoi’s southern gateway early Tuesday morning. Around 2:30 a.m., the vehicles pass the elevated tracks on Cau Dien Street. The train cars made it to the depot in Nhon at around 3 a.m. They will be placed on rails for assembling and testing. Le Trung Hieu, Deputy Head of MRB, said that the train will be given test runs in depot after some adjustments and installation of electronic parts that had been temporarily removed during the transportation. The train will be put on public display later this year. Foreign experts guide the delivery of the train cars into the depot. The first of 10 trains to be deployed on the Nhon-Hanoi Railway Station route has four cars, each 80 m long. The train is made of standard European aluminum alloy produced by a French contractor. Each train can carry 944 to 1,124 people. It has a designed speed of 80 kph and a commercial speed of 35 kph. The Nhon-Hanoi Railway Station route is expected to run commercially on an 8.5 km long elevated track in the second half of 2021. The remaining 4 km long underground section is expected to become operational by the end of 2022. Two more trains are expected to arrive in March next year and the 10th train, the last one, will reach Vietnam in June.

Late but finally arrived. Also, the components of first Saigon metro came from Japan.

Two crane trucks with capacities of 450 and 250 tons lift a train car Saturday, October 10, 2020. Nguyen Bui Minh Quan, deputy director of the metro line’s management board under the HCMC Management Authority for Urban Railways (MAUR), said the cars will be inspected thoroughly before being deployed in a pilot run. Late Friday night and early Saturday morning, three trailer trucks had carried the three cars that will be used by HCMC’s first metro line from Khanh Hoi Port to the Long Binh Depot. The cars had arrived at the port Thursday morning.

A total of 51 Japanese-made cars, each 21 meters long, three meters high, four meters wide and weighing 37 tons, will be used for the first metro line. It took around 10 minutes for the crane to pick a car from the trailer truck and place it on a 200-meter-long track.

As soon as the cars were placed on the track, Japanese staff and experts began checking the rail system, aligning its wheels at different sections. This process took over an hour. The metro line comprises three contract packages executed by Japanese contractors Sumitomo Corporation and Hitachi, and a consortium comprising Vietnamese state-owned Civil Engineering Construction Corporation No. 6 and Sumitomo Corporation.

A Japanese expert goes under the car and lies on the track as he inspects it. In the coming days, the contractors will install the power line to prepare for the test run.

The wheels are fitted onto the railway tie, a rectangular support used on railroad tracks. The track gauge, or the space between the rails, is more than 1.4 meters.

A metro line staff inspects the coupling device that will connect two cars. Thus linked, the first three cars will become a train that will run on the 19.7-km metro route No.1 from Ben Thanh Market in District 1 to the Suoi Tien theme park in District 9. The route with 14 stations, 11 elevated and three underground, will have 17 trains . The first train will move at speeds of 110 kph on the elevated section and 80 kph in the tunnel.

A truck placed on the track pushes the first car to make space for placing the second car, which is about to be lifted. From now until the end of this year, the first train of the metro line will be tested at the Long Binh Depot. The much-delayed construction of the line had begun in August 2012; and work is now 76 percent complete. The city hopes to complete 85 percent this year and begin commercial operations by the end of next year. The shipping of the remaining 48 cars for the line will depend on the pilot run of the first three. If it goes smoothly as expected, more cars will be delivered mid 2021.

A part of the main workshop that spreads over 4,000 square meters at the Long Binh Depot, where the trains will be parked, maintained, checked and repaired.

The Long Binh Depot, work on which also began in 2012, spreads over 20 hectares. It is about 25 km away from the inner-city area. The depot is 82.2 percent complete, according to latest reports.