Southern Railway on the ‘Clean’ track

Station Cleaning

At the Chennai Central station, the main areas that need to be cleaned daily include the general office space, booking office, current reservation office, passenger circulating area, front entrance, bus area, parking area and ladies & gents waiting rooms. A combination of manual and mechanised cleaning with continuous supervision, especially of high traffic area on a day-to-day basis helped to keep the Chennai Central station clean, said the Station Manager. Daily cleaning is done on the tracks and 15 platforms which are managed by contractors and inhouse staff. “Platforms 1-6 and 12-15 are under two different contracts while platforms 7-11 are managed by 15 inhouse staff with inhouse machines and 26 workers from contracting agency,” G. Suresh, Chief Health Inspector. There are six sub inspectors working with him on different shifts.

Round the clock cleaning of tracks, platforms, circulating area and front or portico areas is under contract. “The basic tools and equipment that go into cleaning of platforms and concourse areas include normal brooms, nylon brushes, ezee mops of Delstar that are used by the contractors and scrubber machine from Delstar for cleaning of concourse area. Liquid soap, soda ash and oxalic acid are used to remove stain in bathrooms and toilets. In the upper class there are about nine toilets and 13 bathrooms besides four pay-and-use toilets managed by Navbharat Enterprises. Everyday, 125,000 people come to this railway station.

Workshop Cleaning

Apart from stations and yards, trains go through a major maintenance at the workshops. M.A. Inbarasu, Chief Mechanical Engineer (Planning), SR, said that these workshops were engaged in rolling stock, like passenger coaches, diesel locomotives and manufacturing of the wagons.

“In Tamil Nadu, we have got three major workshops of which two are at Perembur in Chennai – a carriage & wagon workshop and another locomotive workshop – and the third workshop in Trichi which is over 100 years old.

“The periodic overhauling of passenger coaches and wagon stock are attended to at the Chennai carriage and wagon workshop and that of AC coaches are handled at the locomotive workshop. Besides this, there is periodic diesel overhauling of important trains like the Nilgiri Mountain Railway. A workforce of more than 10,000 is engaged in various activities at these workshops.

“Scrap disposal and cleaning of workshops need to be handled properly. We are looking at changes in cleaning solutions. The Perumbur carriage & wagon workshop has completed 150 years, while the locomotive has completed 75 years. Machines for cleaning workshops and bogies like “the one attached with the tractor” could be driven to many places. These automatically broom and pull out the dust and dirt and can be unloaded in the scrap yard.” Inbarasu also showed interest in the machine using ice pellets as a cleaning medium.

‘Touch and Feel’: How a station must look

According to S. Anantharaman, Chief Commercial Manager/Passenger Management, Southern Railway, the SR deals with 20 lakh passengers per day on an average. It has a total of 728 stations that are classified, based on their earnings from ‘A1’ to ‘F’. The total area of a station is approximately 100,000 sq. mt in ‘A1’ and ‘A’ stations and the number of passengers dealt with at major stations is approximately two lakh passengers/day; at big stations it is approximately one lakh passengers/day and at other stations 50,000 passengers/day.

The main cleaning at various stations include:

Removal and disposal of light debris generated. The collection of debris and wastes on track areas and disposal to recommended locations are dealt with by the health department.
Inspection and cleaning of water supply lines, GLR and OHTs, wells and washing the water supply lines with chemicals as per instructions.
Inspection of drainage lines, fittings, manholes, inspection chambers and gully traps.
Washing the drainage lines, manholes, inspection chambers, gully traps at intervals.
Inspection of toilets and bathrooms.
Washing the track areas and in between floor areas with high powered compressor and nozzles.
Cleaning the rolling shutters, collapsible gates, grill gates, fixed grills, steel/wooden doors, aluminum glazed doors, fully glazed doors, aluminium glazed windows, fully glazed windows and steel/wooden windows by mechanised/manual cleaning systems.
Cleaning of doors, windows, ventilators, booking windows and walls/floors tiled areas, floor areas of station buildings ceramic tiled, granite/marble/kota stone floorings, etc., and station entry points, approach roads, parking areas, compound walls and lawns with cleaning chemicals.

Steel structures/beams of the high ceilings of the station.
Separation of waste into three bins – non-bio degradable, recyclable and organic. The waste collected is transported to the secondary collection area from where the first two types of waste are taken care of by the municipality and by auctioning. Vermiculture plants/biogas plants have been provided for treatment of organic wastes. Nearly 21.6 tonnes of garbage is being accumulated per day. About 10,000 passengers create144 cu. ft of garbage.
Emergency cleaning arrangements of circulating areas.

Commercial publicity in trains and upgradation of coaches

Commercial Publicity through advertisements on exterior as well as interior of coaches has been permitted by the Railway Board. Contracts, purely for such advertisements, have been awarded in the past. A new concept has been tried out by the Northern Railway whereby the advertising rights for a Rajdhani train has been awarded to an agency. The agency has upgraded the coach interior by intensive mechanised cleaning at primary and secondary ends, provided on-board housekeeping services and cleaning accessories. The agency is also committed to paying र 25 lakhs per annum for each rake of the train.

Since there has been encouraging passenger response to this scheme, the SR is looking at introducing it for the Southern Railway trains.