Mumbai: Fabric will help in removal of muck on railway tracks, says Central Railway officials

In an unprecedented attempt to beat the Mumbai monsoon, carpets of geo-textile membranes are being laid on stormwater drains along the tracks on Central Railway (CR) to prevent garbage discarded by the public and silt from causing blockages. With the carpets in place, the waste can be easily loaded into garbage trains. The geo-textile membrane carpets are large sheets of permeable fabric that are used in ground engineering and has drainage applications, such as ground filtration, soil separation and ground reinforcement.

Mumbai suburban railway, especially the CR's Mumbai division, is badly affected during the monsoon due to several low-lying areas and water from the city area flowing into the railway premises during high tides. The silt and garbage in the stormwater drains exacerbate the situation. Despite several awareness initiatives, commuters, citizens, those living near tracks and several other stakeholders dump garbage in railway areas which flows into stormwater drains along tracks and eventually leads to flooding during heavy rains and high tides.

"The muck and garbage dumped along the tracks not just deface the premises but also clog the drains crossing under it, leading to water-logging on tracks during monsoon. To keep the tracks clean, CR runs Swachhta Rath trains to collect and clean the muck and garbage on the tracks between CSMT to Kalyan on the mainline and CSMT to Mankhurd on the harbour line. These ‘Raths' also known as muck specials used to operate only at midnight," an official said.

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"The muck and garbage cleaned are packed in gunny bags which are then loaded onto the Swachhta Rath specials. In addition to this, a flat wagon train with multiple JCB machines is also operated to remove muck from the tracks. Last year, about 1.66 lakh cubic metres of muck/garbage were cleared from the tracks in the suburban section and this year the process is under progress," he added.

The geo-textile membrane carpet that is being used on CR

"To tide over the problem of removing muck and silt from the garbage, we are now trying out carpeting stormwater drains next to rail tracks with geo-textile membranes, which would help us not only segregate silt faster but also speed up the removal of muck that can be transferred to Swachhta Raths in a faster and efficient way," an official said.

1,66,000
Cubic metres of trash removed from CR tracks last year