Three coaches shipped all the way from Japan have been placed on HCMC’s first metro track in an elaborate, meticulous feat of logistics. 

After being transported from the Khanh Hoi Port in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 4 to the Long Binh Depot in District 9, the first three coaches of the city’s first metro line are on its tracks. The depot will act as the control center of the line until 2040, managing maintenance and repair of its trains.

Two crane trucks with capacities of 450 and 250 tons lift a coach 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 coaches 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 coaches that will be used by HCMC’s first metro line from Khanh Hoi Port to the Long Binh Depot. The coaches had arrived at the port Thursday morning.

A total of 51 Japanese-made coaches, 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 coach from the trailer truck and place it on a 200-meter-long track.

As soon as the coaches 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 coach 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 coaches. Thus linked, the first three coaches 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 coach to make space for placing the second coach, 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 coaches for the line will depend on the pilot run of the first three. If it goes smoothly as expected, more coaches 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.