Secunderabad station to get coach washing unit

Secunderabad: The South Central Railway (SCR) has come up with another modernised cleaning facility. An automatic coach washing plant (ACWP) being set up at Secunderabad railway station at an estimated cost of Rs 1.8 crore would take only 15 minutes to clean the entire train. This would be the second such facility after Kacheguda railway station in City.

The Secunderabad station is one of major railway junctions in SCR. It handles nearly 2.5 lakh passengers every day. Around 250 trains run on its tracks daily and 50 trains originate and terminate at the station each day. This junction is also known for maintenance activities in the yard. Daily the coaches are manually washed. In this process water is wasted.

"So to reduce this wastage and ensure optimum usage of water, SCR has planned to set up an automatic coach washing plant. In Introduction of such plants, man power would be reduced, as at present for cleaning each coach a man is being deployed.

This plant has a high-pressure water jet, horizontal and vertical rotating nylon and cotton combination brushes for cleaning coaches of a train rake," said an official.

Generally, it takes 300 liters of water for washing a coach. Of that 240 liters are recycled water. Around 150 coaches get cleaned at Secunderabad railway station every day.

If this plant comes into being, a huge quantity of water would be saved. The first of this kind was already set up at Kacheguda railway Station in 2019, where around 160 coaches get washed each day.

Once this plant is set up at Secunderabad, it would give a neat and clean rail journey. At present the plant is in initial stages of construction. The work started in the first week of March. Shortly it will get commissioned, added the official.