The processed water will be supplied from recycling plant at Basin Bridge; to be used to clean spaces where trains halt

In a bid to conserve fresh water, the Southern Railway is expanding its basic infrastructure for treatment of grey water to clean the aprons along platforms at Chennai Central railway station.

Aprons are where the trains halt at the platforms for a long time and where a lot of waste, dirt and even human waste accumulates due to usage of toilets at stations.

At present, the railway administration uses fresh water supplied by Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board to clean the apron areas. Clearing the soiled areas in the cement concrete apron areas also been a problem as a perfect mechanised disposal system is yet to be found.

To tackle this problem, the railway administration is planning to bring treated water from the Recycling Plant at the Train Care Centre, Basin Bridge, to all the platforms at Central station from where over 200 long-distance trains are operated.

“The Recycling Plant was established at Basin Bridge in January last year and we treat two lakh litres of water a day, against the installed capacity of 10 lakh litres a day. For cleaning about 300 coaches of over 20 trains, including Duronto and Shatabdi, we use about 2 lakh litres of water. We plan to increase the quantity of treated water so that it can be used to clean the aprons,” official sources told The Hindu.

According to these sources, main pipelines to transport the treated water have been laid and the branch pipes to take them to all the platforms have to be fixed. The work is likely to be completed in a few more months.

Of the 35 lakh litres of water Metrowater supplies them every day, most of it is used to fill the water tanks inside the coaches and also the drinking water tanks at Central. At the Train Care Centre in Basin Bridge, over 1,000 staff work round the clock in sweeping, scrubbing, mopping and drying the interiors and exteriors of the coaches to ensure they are clean before they are shunted to the platform.

Officials said that on an average, a rake takes six hours to clean, but it takes little time for it to get dirty. “It just takes one or two passengers to make the coaches dirty. If passengers treat trains as their mobile homes, they will be a lot more cleaner,” they said.