LAGOS – The Mass Transit Train Service (MTTS) on Monday received a boost as the Nigeria Railway [pro_ad_display_adzone id=”10″]
Corporation (NRC) took delivery of 18 trolleys and two 16-seater rail buses .
Mr Adeseyi Sijuwade, the Managing Director of the corporation, disclosed this to newsmen after he and other management staff had a test ride on the trolleys and buses in Lagos.
“The trolleys will enhance the operations of the corporation, especially when there is a derailment
“Each of the trolleys can accommodate six officials and can be used to evacuate passengers and goods to the nearest terminus from a derailment point.’’
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that NRC, had in April 2014, taken delivery of six 68-seater
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air conditioned coaches.
“The trolleys will be handed over to the corporation’s track maintenance engineers since they maintain the rail tracks for their regular inspection and maintenance.
“Most of the tracks are not accessible by roads and for us to have very good tracks, we need to equip our engineers with these motorised trolleys,’’ he said.
Sijuwade also said that the corporation had taken delivery of two air conditioned rail buses which would be used for rail track inspection by its engineers.
He said that each of them had capacity for 16 passengers.
Sijuwade said that the corporation had also taken delivery of additional five 68-seater coaches under its mass transit programme that would be deployed to the eastern line.
He said that the new coaches would commence operations after the inauguration of Markurdi to Port Harcourt service route.
“Our engineers spent last weekend to test the air conditioners (AC), the automatic door systems and the passengers’ information system in the coaches and found them to be functioning efficiently.
“You will recall that the Vice-President Namadi Sambo inaugurated the Port Harcourt to Enugu service route in December. 2014.
“What we will be doing by this weekend is extend that service from Enugu to Makurdi,” he said.
Mr Austin Ogbuanya, the Assistant Director, Carriage and Wagons of NRC, said the new trolleys were improvement over the pump trolleys.
“This one is far better than the pump trolley which carries a maximum of four persons and is manually driven.
“The manual one requires four men to wine it constantly for it to move; so if they get tired the trolley will stop moving.
“But this motorised and modernised version runs on diesel and each of them carries more men.
“Each one has an additional carriage attached to it that can carry some of their engineers’ tools to points of derailment.
“It can be used for quick intervention and wet season patrol.
“So the civil engineering team can use them to inspect the track and ensure that it is in good condition before the train is allowed to move on it,’’ he said. (NAN)