Rail Coach Factory to roll out coaches with bio-toilets

The Rail Coach Factory (RCF), based at Kapurthala in Punjab, has decided to fit bio-toilets in all the 1,600 coaches manufactured by it in the next financial year. RCF is a coach manufacturing unit of the Indian Railways.

In 2014-15, it has fitted 950 coaches with bio-toilets, out of the total 1,300 coaches it manufactured till date. Overall, it has fitted over 2,400 coaches with bio-toilets as on date.

Stressing on the need to work towards Prime Minister, Narendra Modi’s ‘Swachh Bharat’ drive, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu in his Budget speech said 17,000 more toilets would be replaced by bio-toilets, also called green toilets,.

Speaking to Business Standard, a senior official in Rail Coach Factory at Kapurthala said, “From the next financial year, all the coaches, including conventional and LHB  (Linke Hoffman Busch) coaches, will be fitted with bio-toilets.”

In bio-toilets, a colony of anaerobic bacteria convert human waste mainly into water and small amount of gases (methane and CO2). The gases emit into the atmosphere and waste is discharged after chlorination onto the tracks. Human waste, thus, does not fall on the railway track.

This procedure is environment-friendly and improves the working condition for the railway track staff. According to railway officials, defacement and corrosion of railway tracks by night soil lead to loss of crores of rupees. Bio-toilets have the advantage of preventing corrosion of railway tracks, as it prevents discharge of human waste.

RCF, in association with Defence Research and Development Establishment, developed this cost-effective indigenous technology, to treat faecal waste in coaches.

The technology provides an almost maintenance free and a low cost solution to the problem of open defecation on the railway tracks.

On being asked the production of coaches in current fiscal year, he added,” We are targeting to produce 1523 coaches this year against the installed capacity of 1,500 coaches per annum. Till date we have produced 1300 coaches of different variants like Rajdhani, Shatabdi, and other mail/express trains.