BENGALURU: An automatic facility that can clean the exterior of train coaches was declared open by General Manager, South Western Railway, A K Singh at Krantivira Sangolli Rayanna railway station on Wednesday morning.
The Automatic Coach Washing Plant (ACWP) will be using lesser water and reduced manpower than the existing manual method of cleaning.
The ACWP is the first such for cleaning of train coaches in Karnataka and has been installed at one end of Platform One.
Briefing newspersons, Singh said, "The plant will result in huge savings of water as much of cleaning in it will be carried out using recycled water. We plan to have similar plants at Yesvantpur and the new terminus at Baiyappanahalli next."
According to Senior Divisional Mechanical Engineer, Bangalore Division, Jayant Ramachandran, "The cleaning would be a thorough affair as it is fully automated. In the case of manual cleaning, there is a tendency to leave out top areas. It works out much cheaper for us too as the cost involved is just Rs 42.91 per coach as compared to Rs 214.78 per coach spent for a coach using the physical method."
The automated plant uses 300 litres per coach as compared to the usage of 450 to 500 litres per coach when manual cleaning is done, Ramachandran said. "The time taken for washing a 24-coach train is just 8 minutes as compared to nearly 30 minutes taken by the traditional cleaning method. In terms of manpower too, it helps enormously."
The ACWP requires just one person to monitor the control room as compared to six people involved in the manual cleaning method.
The plant, manufactured by Oriental Manufacturers at Vadodara, has been procured by Railways at a cost of over Rs 1.67 lakh.
The GM later left to monitor the progress made at Baiyappanahalli Third Coaching Terminal, which has a revised deadline of March 2020.