The Vijayawada division of South Central Railway is looking at engaging ice blasting services to clean bogies and accessories of BG Electric Locomotives. “We find that Dry Ice Blasting technology is a better way of addressing cleaning of bogies and we will be floating a tender to this effect on August 2, 2012,” Senior Divisional Electrical Engineer, Traction Rolling Stock, Vijayawada, told Clean India Journal during a brief interview.
At present, the bogie cleaning in the locomotive shed in Vijayawada “is a labour intensive and time consuming process”. The bogies are lifted with material handling equipment and submerged in caustic soda solution for several hours before it is taken up for cleaning with high pressure jets. This again involves another two hours. Besides, a lot many workers have been deployed to carry out these processes. “We saw a demo of dry ice blasting, which eliminates the need for shifting the bogie and takes about just two hours for the entire clean up. Even though the power consumption is more, the requirement for manpower and material handling will be considerably reduced.”
The tender will consider service providers engaging dry ice blasting technology for cleaning of 248 sets in a period of two years.