The first of the two non-AC trains with the Automatic Door Closure System for Mumbai Suburban Railways arrived at the Kurla car shed on Monday. Officials said that the rake will be used for certification trials first, and that it will take around three more months before its public rollout.The decision to introduce non-AC rakes with an automatic door-closing system came after an accident on 9 June 2025, in which five commuters died after falling from the footboards of an overcrowded non-AC local train near Mumbra, a suburb of Thane. The Railway Board ordered the change, and the resulting special train has been manufactured by the Railways’ Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Chennai.The train has 12 coaches with a total capacity of 5,698 passengers — 1,003 seated and 4,695 standing. It has eight second-class and four first-class compartments, of which two first-class coaches and five second-class coaches are reserved for women passengers.Mumbai Suburban is one of the busiest railway systems in the world. Spread across 376 route kilometres, it is covered under two zones: Central and Western Railways. As many as 3,234 EMU local services, including AC trains, operate each day, carrying around 66 lakh passengers. There are five corridors: two on Western Railway, two on Central Railway and one on the Central Railway’s Harbour Line. The first non-AC closed-door local will be operated by Central Railway.Mumbai’s local trains are the lifeline of the country’s financial capital, but overcrowding continues to claim thousands of lives every year. The Indian Express reported in December 2025 that 6,760 commuters died after falling from overcrowded non-AC local trains between January 2014 and May 2025, according to Government Railway Police and RTI data, while another 14,257 were injured in similar incidents. These deaths occur almost entirely on non-AC trains, which run with open doors and face severe peak-hour crowding. In contrast, AC locals, equipped with automatic doors, have recorded no fall-off deaths.This stark contrast was one of the main reasons that the Railways decided to introduce non-AC trains with closed doors to make the service affordable for all passengers. AC local trains, which account for just 7% of the total services in the city, already have a closed-door system. But the ticket prices are significantly higher for the common passengers. For instance, the fare for a non-AC local train for Churchgate to Virar (VT) is Rs 20, compared with Rs 115 for the same journey on an AC train. The louvered doors of the train (Express)The main challenge, however, is ventilation. During past trials of similar trains, CO2 levels inside closed-door non-AC coaches were found to rise 2.5 times. To address this problem, a new design was prepared: The doors have louvres (the horizontal, angled slats allowing air circulation while maintaining privacy), and the coaches are fitted with roof-mounted ventilation units to pump in fresh air. The coaches also have vestibules to allow the free movement of passengers between coaches and distribute the load evenly.Key features of the trainStory continues below this adA senior ICF official said that the door mechanism is similar to that adopted in Kolkata Metro, AC EMU, and EMU (US) projects. “The doors are equipped with louvres to improve natural ventilation in non-AC conditions. The automatic sliding doors are on both sides of the coach and have anti-drag features. There is also an interlocking system, which means that the train cannot move unless the doors are closed. Additionally, there are three types of windows for ventilation – standard wider windows, emergency wider windows and smaller windows near the end wall,” said the official.The sliding-shutter wider window size is 1,966 mm × 900 mm, an increase over the earlier 990 mm × 915 mm window in existing non-AC local trains, allowing greater airflow.Railways in 2025 | Kashmir and Mizoram lines completed; new frontiers, traffic and freight challenges aheadSealed gangways allow the passengers to move between coaches. An internal sliding door is set into the partition between sections of the coach to provide an alternate exit in case the main side door fails to open.The train also has a passenger information system displaying the next station, route information and safety messages. Emergency talk-back units are installed near the doors for communication with the driver. The car body is constructed from steel with corrugated roofing, and the interior panels are aluminium composite – lightweight, fire-resistant, and vandal-resistant.Story continues below this ad“The non-AC EMU is a significant upgrade over conventional open-door EMUs. It will prevent unsafe boarding and alighting from moving trains. It will also reduce accidents caused by open doors, and bring discipline among passengers with controlled boarding of the train,” said the ICF official.Is this the final prototype?Not yet. The train still needs to go through multiple rounds of trials to demonstrate that it will not create suffocation when the coaches are full. As a long-term solution, the Railways has sanctioned 238 AC rakes of 12 cars under Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP)-III and IIIA at a cost of Rs 19,293 crore. Once delivered, these trains should allow Mumbai Suburban to replace its entire fleet with AC services. Officials said procurement of these rakes is underway and trains will start arriving by 2028.The Railways is also pursuing other capacity expansion projects, including platform extensions, multi-tracking of lines, and station development. Currently, Western Railway operates 1,414 services, including 133 AC services, while Central Railway operates 1,820 services, including 94 AC services serving passengers across Mumbai, Thane, Kalyan, Virar and Panvel.