“The uniform and automated washing of coaches provide our commuters a clean and hygienic travel experience and an eco-friendly system of washing saves time for a better frequency and maintenance which is vital for a controlled and modern transport system.” – MMOPL
Traditionally trains are washed manually with pressure pipes. It is time consuming, labour intensive, wastes water and doesn’t ensure a uniform hygienic cleaning of the coaches.
To provide a clean and modern transport technology to Mumbai, MMOPL has installed fully automated wash plant in the Metro Depot. The automated system equipped with facilities to pre-wet coaches, mix chemicals in water and clean coaches evenly from all sides, takes just three minutes to finish the cleaning process compared to approximately three hours with manual washing.
Water used in the process is drained into the recycling plant for reuse. The modern plant saves over 80% of 600 liters of water it uses for washing against 3000 liters used in manual cleaning.
Further, no acid is used for cleaning the rakes and the detergent used is natural and water based.
The wash plant has been installed on the tracks leading inside the depot. All trains going inside or going out of depot can chose to use the wash plant service instantly.
In a simple process, the train to be washed passes through the automated plant at 5kmph speed and gets cleaned automatically. Other trains can pass through the automated plant without any hindrance at a speed of more than 5kmph.
The brush arrangement ensures the trains gets washed at one go and reduces the downtime of the train. This way more washed trains are made operational for passengers. Finally, Reverse Osmosis (RO), water is used for removing the stains on glasses as well as any odour after the washing.
The process of the plant once put in the auto mode doesn’t require any human interface. Its panel will display all the data including the number of trains washed, the process of wash the water and chemicals used.”