Chennai, Nov 6 (IANS): The Rs.14,600 crore Chennai Metro Rail project crossed a major milestone Wednesday with Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa flagging off the test-run of a four-coach train.

Chennai Metro Rail Ltd's managing director K. Rajaraman explained the features of the train to Jayalalithaa before she flagged it off at Koyembadu. The test-run was for around 800 metres.

The first set of coaches were imported from Brazil. The first batch of locally-made coaches is expected to be ready by 2014 at the French multi-national Alstom's factory near here.

The metro project is likely to be operational in May-June 2014.

The project involves two corridors in phase I covering 45 km. The first corridor (23 km) will connect Washermenpet in north Chennai and Meenambakkam airport in south Chennai.

The second corridor (22 km) would connect Chennai Central and St. Thomas Mount.

Around 14 km of phase-I and nine km of phase-II would be underground.