Services along the East-West corridor of Metro Railway, Kolkata, will remain suspended for four days from Thursday, for communication trial, the Metro said in a statement on Wednesday.

The trial will be held as the tunnelling work between Esplanade and Sealdah stations has been completed.

The 4-day suspension will be the first of the two back-to-back phases with the second one scheduled from February 20 to 23, the statement said.

During that period, train services along the entire Green Line from Howrah Maidan to Salt Lake Sector V will not be available to facilitate full-proof testing of the state-of-the-art Communication-based Train Control system.

“On successful completion of tunnelling work between Esplanade and Sealdah stations, Metro Railway Kolkata is going to grant complete traffic block in two spells starting from tomorrow and again from February 20 to 23 for testing of Communication Based Train Control (CBTC) System on the entire Green Line Metro corridor from Howrah Maidan to Salt Lake Sector-V,” the statement read.

In Metro Railway terminology, ‘traffic block’ means suspension of service of trains.

Currently, metro services are available along the corridor from Howrah Maidan to Esplanade and from Sealdah to Sector-V.

Due to cave-in during tunnelling work at Bowbazar along the Esplanade-Sealdah stretch and seepage of underground water in September 2019 as the boring machine hit an aquifer and at least two more similar incidents in subsequent years, services could not commence along the 2.5-km-long Esplanade-Sealdah stretch of the 16.6-km-long East-West corridor.

Trains now run along two disjointed sections from Sector-V to Sealdah and from Esplanade to Howrah Maidan.