Northern railways develops hands-free wash basins for contactless experience

The Railways plans to roll out hands-free wash basins at all its stations, field units, and hospitals to protect its employees and passengers from coronavirus infection.

An order was issued on Saturday (April 25) to develop and carry out a trial for a similar contactless wash basin system for passenger coaches as well.

In this wash basin, the user has to primarily press a pedal attached to the contactless basin with his feet for water and soap to come out from separate dispensers, without touching any knob with his or her hands.

A Northern Railways workshop has, however, manufactured different models of contactless wash basins with the help of local resources and in-house engineering skills – foot-pedal operated with clutch-wire mechanism, foot-pedal operated with mechanical linkage, electro-mechanically operated system, and a sensor-based automatically operated system.

The timeline for the roll-out of the wash basins will depend on the number of orders being given to the Northern Railways workshop which has developed the model, a senior official of the zone said.

“These hands-free wash basins can be used at stations field units, workshops and hospitals. We are exploring ways to put them on passenger coaches as well and we will start trials soon.

“We have recognised that the pandemic will spread if we continue with our conventional ways of handwashing at conventional wash basins, Arun Arora, the Principal Chief Mechanical Engineer, Northern Railway,” told PTI.

“The touch-free rugged and reliable wash basins where people can wash their hands as many times as they want without touching the tap or soap dispenser is the answer to this problem.”

One unit of the contactless wash basin will tentatively cost around ₹8,000-₹11,000.

Arora said the prices would decrease significantly once they are mass-produced.

The Jagadhri workshop of the Northern Railways, the national transporters largest zone, has gone big with its contactless innovation, has developed this gadget, leveraging mechatronics.

Seventy such wash basins have already been installed at several field offices of northern railways.

Loaded with automatic sensors, the wash basin is electrically operated along with a standby manual mechanical paddle operation, allowing the user a completely hands-free experience.

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Such hands-free wash basins have already been provided at various field units, workshops and other places of the Northern Railway like the Central Hospital, New Delhi.

“Before the resumption of normal work in field units post-lockdown, we plan to install hundreds of such wash basins at all the field units of Northern Railway,” said Arora.

Meanwhile, the Electric Loco Shed in Angul, Odisha, has also tried to manufacture a foot-operated hand wash basin which allows people to avoid any contact with water tap or the soap dispenser by hand.

Easily operated using the feet, this design has separate levers for running water and soap dispensers and is being used by the shed staff.

Another attempt has also been made at the East Central Railway (ECR)’s Barwadih Wagon Care Centre in its Dhanbad Division, where a modified wash basin has been developed in which the water tap and the soap-dispenser are mechanically operated without touch.