It takes 20,000 liters of water to clean one train!

To clean one train, it takes 20,000 liters of water!Over two lakh liters of fresh water is being used every day to clean 20 trains in Chennai alone. With Indian Railways cleaning hundreds of trains every day, crores of liters of fresh water is being wasted on a daily basis. But, cleaning trains is equally important. So how to clean trains without wasting fresh water? Well, Chennai has an answer.

Basin Bridge Train Care Center is supplying treated sewage water to the Chennai Central Railway Station as they embark on a new strategy to save water. Main pipelines are laid for the transportation of water while branch carries the water to all platforms. This drastically reduces the amount of fresh water being used to clean trains.

Close to 20 trains are cleaned and washed at Train Care Center each day. Cleaning work is done on a 24×7 basis and while trains are cleaned, it is also apron areas that need regular cleaning of waste, dirt and human excreta due to the use of toilets at station.

Lack of a proper mechanized system for cleaning is not in use which means 1,282 staff work in shifts to clean coaches prior to them being shunted to the platform. Each cleaning operation takes 6 hours per train but trains get dirty in no time due to mindless passengers who fail to practice the least amount of cleanliness (remember the condition of all-new Mahanama Express just 1 week after it started operation?).

While Chennai Metro supplies 35 lakh liters to Basin Bridge, the Water Recycling Plant at Basin Bridge has the capacity to recycle 10 lakh liters per day. Recycled water will be used for cleaning of train coaches and aprons while fresh water will be filled in overhead tanks both in coaches and at the railway station to be used for drinking purposes. Each coach has 4 water tanks with a capacity of 450 liters.

This article has first appeared in Rushlane.com