In a big step towards water conservation, the Indian Railways has installed the first automatic coach washing plant in the state of Madhya Pradesh, reports Financial Express.
The plant has been started by the national transporter at Habibganj railway station in Bhopal. This move by Indian Railways will ensure the conservation of water as with the help of this washing plant at Habibganj, provided with modern equipment, high quality cleaning of train coaches is being done using 90 per cent less water in just a duration of 10 minutes.
The development was made public by the official Twitter handle of the Ministry of Railways who shared a video to show how train coaches are being cleaned with the newly installed washing plant.
Earlier this year, the Indian Railways had stated its plans to introduce ‘Automatic Coach Washing Plant’, a modern state-of-the-art facility. The ministry had stated that the plant will clean the outer surface of the railway compartments, and will be introduced in washing depots which have a capacity of over 300 coaches across the country.
Currently, coaches are manually cleaned. The process is time-consuming and labour intensive since it is had to reach out to complete surface area of the coach. Further, the process consumes a high amount of water with each coach consuming about 1,500 litres of water.
The ministry adds that only 300 litres water per coach is consumed with Automatic Coach Washing Plants. This amounts to an estimated annual saving of 1.28 crore kilolitres of water.
The system uses a high-pressure water jet, horizontal and vertical rotating cotton and nylon brushes in a multi-stage cleaning mechanism. Further, it uses minimal electrical energy, workforce and maintenance and provides a better quality of results compared to the conventional manual system.