India, April 30 -- In a bid to upgrade the suburban rail network, Western Railway (WR) is set to convert 17 existing 12-coach local trains into 15-coach services and introduce 12 additional air-conditioned (AC) locals from May 1. Central Railway (CR) will also be upgrading 14 non-AC services to AC on the Harbour line from the same date.

The augmentation is aimed at increasing capacity and improving commuter comfort without altering the overall number of services. On the Western line, the number of 15-coach trains will rise from 227 to 244.

In a first, eight of the extended trains will run on the Virar-Dahanu Road section, a rapidly growing stretch that sees an average daily footfall of around 1.25 lakh commuters. However, due to operati...