South East Central Railway (SECR)’s Raipur Division is installing the most modern ‘Automated Coach Washing Plant’ for cleaning of the train coaches at Durg Railway station-based Coach Maintenance Depot, a senior official informed on Sunday.

At present the rail coaches are being washed manually which is not only a time-taking exercise but also very difficult to clean up properly the upper part of the coach.

Keeping all these basic factors in mind and to save cleaning time, one ‘Automated Coach Washing Plant’ is being purchased and installed at the Durg depot at estimated cost of Rs 2.2 crore, SECR Public Relations Inspector Shiv Kumar informed.

He said, “In the plant not only the train coach outer portion will be cleaned but also the train will be moving at speed of 7-8 kilometres per hour will also be washed. If a train has 24 coaches, it will take only 8 minutes for washing.”

“The system is installed with high-pressure water jets and is fitted with nylon and cotton brushes which will be cleaning the surface of coaches. It is a multilevel cleaning system, and will be using re-cycled water and reduce pollution,” he pointed out.

SECR official further claimed, “The modern system has many advantages as it would be washed with less water. Secondly, it uses only 20 percent fresh water while remaining water used is re-cycled water. It also uses detergent and cleaning agents automatically.”

The official said that it is hoped that after installing the plant, 6 to 7 trains will be cleaned on daily basis, which is not possible in traditional manual system.

SECR official told, “Central Organisation for Modernisation of Workshops (COFMOW), a public sector undertaking of Indian Railways, New Delhi as centralized machine procurement agency has called the tender in month of October, 2018. The work is likely to commence from January 2019.