RailEnquiry

An ambitious high technology, modern maintenance hub for cleaning railway coaches will make its debut at the Tatanagar railway station later this month. The facility, which is referred to as the washing line by officials, was originally scheduled to be initiated on Thursday. However, the inauguration later was put back for a week. Built by the Chakradharpur division of South Eastern Railway, the Rs 20 crore state-of-the-art complex has been designed to ensure proper upkeep and cleaning of the coaches of mail, express and passenger trains that rolls into it. Ritwik Sharma, the new appointed coaching depot officer at Tatanagar told The Telegraph that the railways would ensure that the complex was up and running by the end of this month. "The construction department of the railways, which has been assigned the project, will pick a new date for the inauguration of the facility soon," Sharma assured, adding that senior officials, including the general manager of South Eastern Railway A.K. Verma was expected to attend the inauguration function. "Once the new facility becomes operational there will be no compromise on cleanliness of the trains. The existing facility has become pretty old and therefore we felt the need to come up with a modern complex for upkeep of trains," he said. A spokesperson of South Eastern Railway said that Tatanagar had been missing out on new trains so far for the lack of a proper coaching complex. "Once the complex is commissioned, we can bargain for more trains originating from Tatanagar from the Railways Board", he said. The new complex, however, after its inauguration would take care of the coach maintenance issues and enable washing and cleaning of coaches of two trains at a time. "Two pits with tracks and level crossings have been constructed at the site. We might add an additional pit at the facility later" Sharma said. The new complex will be able to accommodate 24 coaches for cleaning, washing and other necessary maintenance work at a time.