Visakhapatnam: The Waltair Railway Division has launched an 'Automatic Coach Washing Plant' which can clean 24 coaches in ten minutes. The Vishakapatnam Rail Coaching depot has achieved modernized cleaning of train coaches with the inclusion of water-saving techniques.
The total investment on the project is worth Rs 2 crores and it can clean around 8,000 railway coaches in a month. The Waltair Railway division launched this project to ensure that people can travel freely amid the pandemic.
Cleaning of the railway coaches which earlier required 850 litres of water per coach can now be done with 400 litres. The new technique saves 52 litres of water and almost 90 per cent of the cleaning can be done in a few minutes.
The project comes at a time when the railways have resumed their operations catering to the growing demands of people in the festive season.
How does it work?
As soon as the railway coaches reach the cleaning point, all the motors, brushes and sprinklers in the motor start functioning automatically. A sensor is attached at the cleaning point and vertical brushes on both sides of the coaches also clean them rapidly.
The authorities use sodium hypo chloride solution to clean the roofs for which several sprinklers are also attached on both sides of the coaches. Almost ten brushes comprised of motors and sprinklers are also provided on both sides of the track speeding up the cleaning process.
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With the help of 'Automatic Coach Washing Plant', the doors, handles, windows, grills and other parts are cleaned and freed from bacteria and virus. Apart from this, big-sized blowers are also set up near the plant and are used for drying.
At present, the automatic coach watering plants can clean up to five to ten trains in a day with the help of ten brushes.
The Automatic Coach Washing Plant is designed in an eco-friendly manner and reverse osmosis method of water sprinkling is used to clean the rail coaches. The water discharged is further recycled and used for various other purposes. The officials are also planning to attach speedy sensors and water meters to this plant in future.
