BHUBANESWAR: East Coast Railway (ECoR) has decided to set up automatic coach washing plants at Puri and Visakhapatnam.Such plants would come up for the first time in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. The facilities would be set up under the environment management programmes at coach maintenance depots in both the places at a cost of around `2 crore each.
Once installed, the Puri plant will properly clean the exterior of coaches in an automatic manner by removing dust, dirt and other such deposits. The cleaning of coaches and trains will be done on a designated line of the coach maintenance depot.
Chief Mechanical Engineer Manas Poddar said ECoR has already placed orders with the Central Organisation for Modernisation of Workshops, an autonomous agency under Ministry of Railways, for the plants.
“Tenders have been finalised and the firm has already completed site survey at Puri. It is expected that the plant would come up at Puri and Visakhapatnam by end of this year,” he informed. While the coaches are being cleaned in static or stationary position at present, a suitable alkaline detergent compatible with the body and paint of the coach will be used at the plants for washing.
In the automatic mode of operation, a number of big brushes are fixed to various machines and these are designed in such a manner that they can properly clean the sidewalls of coaches.Ultrasonic devices and photoelectric cells would be provided in the set up along with an effluent treatment plant which will treat water for its repeated use. It will help reduce consumption of fresh water during cleaning of coaches. A coach requires maximum of 300 litre of water of which 60 litre would be fresh water.
“As expected each empty train rake would be cleaned in about 20 minutes. There would be a number of sensors which would work as and when there is movement of train along the designated line,” Poddar added.The ECoR is also planning similar coach washing plants at Bhubaneswar and MEMU Shed at Khurda Road in the second phase.