Northern Railways gets automatic coach cleaning

New Delhi : In a bid to save water and improve efficiency in the cleaning of trains, the Northern Railways has started using `Automatic Train Coach Washing System'.

The first plant of this Automatic Train Coach Washing System is undergoing commissioning trials at New Delhi's Hazrat Nizamuddin station. The plant, set up at a cost of 1.6 crore, has water recycling and effluent treatment setups. It has a capacity of cleaning 250 coaches per day.

This is the first time Northern Railways is going for automatic washing system even though the Konkan Railways has adopted the technology much before it.

The high speed cleaning takes just 7 to 8 minutes to wash 24 coach rake compared to long time taken earlier. The plant has a capacity to work 24x7 with eight hour shift each. Officials said the new system takes only 240 litres per coach as compared to 1500 litres per coach through manual washing. Besides, Automatic Train Coach Washing System uses only 20 per cent of fresh water and while the balance 80 per cent is the recycled water.

As for the process, washing has various stages that begins with automatic pre wash followed by detergent spray, brushing, soaking, using touchless chemical, and high pressure hot water jet cleaning.