Prayagraraj Express, the flagship train of North Central Railway is completing 36 years of excellent service to the nation on 16.07.20. On this date last year Coral anniversary of this highly patronized service between Prayagraj and New Delhi was celebrated in befitting manners at Prayagraj Jn. station. Introduced on 16th July,1984, Prayagraj Express has been providing quality journey experience and has achieved many milestones in last 04 decades. Started with 17 vacuum braked red coloured coaches it was converted to 24 coach blue coloured air braked stock in 2003 and latest LHB rake w.e.f. 16th December, 2016. Popularity of this train can be gauged from the fact that it runs with maximum possible composition for any passenger train of 24 LHB coaches.
Owing to Covid-19 situation regular passenger services were suspended for over 50 days and started w.e.f 12.05.20 and 01.06.20 in form of AC specials and other special trains including two originating specials between Prayagraj- New Delhi and Kanpur New Delhi. As of now 126 specials trains including 02 originating trains of NCR are catering essential journey needs of passengers for from different stations over North Central Railway. In view of Covid-19 pandemic elaborate arrangements for social distancing, hygiene and sanitization etc. have been made for stations handling these special trains and originating and passing trains with schedule stoppage over NCR.
Under the comprehensive sanitisation protocol for originating special trains pre-disinfection of rakes on arrival, intensive cleaning of frequent touch area of coaches, extra fresh air circulation in air conditioned coaches, pre-heating of AC coaches for disinfection, provision of awareness stickers inside coaches, provision of sanitizer inside coaches, post maintenance disinfection etc. are being ensured by coaching depots Prayagraj and Kanpur. To mitigate any chance of infection face shield, gloves, mask/face cover, sanitizer etc. are provided to all Rly and contractual staff rendering essential on-board services in these originating specials. All on-board staff are also being screened thermally and for any other Covid-19 symptoms before start and after completion of journey in each direction.
Conventionally Sodium Hypochlorite solution is being used for sanitisation of coaches, however because of corrosive nature prolonged use of this solution is not desirable for sanitization of coaches specially on the areas like berths, floor, critical metallic part of coach etc. General Manager North Central and Northern Railway Shri Rajiv Chaudhry have been continuously stressing on working out more user friendly and effective alternative of Sodium Hypochlorite solution. Rising to this challenge, rolling stock maintenance engineers of North Central Railway have come up 70% alcohol/ Chloroxylenol (4.5%-5.5%)/ Benzalkonium Chloride/ Hydrogen peroxide based disinfectant for coach sanitization which are non-corrosive to metal component and suitable for public exposure.
Use of such commercially available and tested alternative of Sodium Hypochlorite is being started by coaching depots of Prayagraj, Jhansi and Agra divisions for sanitization of coaches. Based on experience in coach sanitization use of alternative compounds shall also be proliferated to other application areas like stations, offices etc. to have maximum protection against the virus without any adverse effect on users and materials.