Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Dirty bedrolls in AC railway coaches to go soon: official

CHENNAI: The era of unhygienic, smelly and dirty bedrolls provided in the air-conditioned class of travel in Southern Railway will end soon.

Asked about this at a press conference here, Southern Railway General Manager Rakesh Chopra, who was addressing the media with Minister of State for Railways R.Velu, said the Railways was aware of the problem, and working on solutions. The quantity of bedrolls was large—because the terminus stations handled at least a hundred trains each day—and there were many issues.

For one, the sheets were Khadi. These required a slightly different cleaning and pressing methods. “All our contractors now have the equipment,” he said. The Railways decided to dry-clean and certify blankets with labels so that passengers could identify an unwashed blanket, he said.

Mr.Velu said the Railways was creating many amenities for passengers. These included better platforms, extension of platforms in places that could not take in 24 coaches of a train , more security and surveillance at stations and deployment of bomb detection squads in more locations such as Arakkonam and waiting areas. Platform extension had been completed in all stations, he said, after examining the progress of the work in Southern Railway here. He released a Tamil version of the railway timetable, which is priced at Rs.30.

Mr. Velu said adequate number of special trains would be operated to clear the Deepavali rush.

Asked about the conversion of unmanned level crossings into manned ones, he said this was being done as per norms, and in phases. There were 1,282 manned level crossings and 1,170 unmanned level crossings in the region, and this year Southern Railway planned to convert 74 unmanned level crossings into manned ones.

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