Passengers travelling on long distance premium trains may soon get relief from a persistent problem. A new system designed to stop garbage from piling up and spilling over inside train coaches is set to have its first trial at Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay Junction in Uttar Pradesh.
Why the old bins kept falling short
Trains fitted with LHB, or Linke-Hofmann-Busch, coaches have long carried dustbins with very limited capacity. As passenger numbers on long routes keep rising, these small bins fill up quickly and garbage begins spilling out, hurting the cleanliness of the coach and forcing cleaning staff to repeatedly clear waste mid-journey. The scale of the issue becomes clear from the fact that around 100 passenger trains pass through a major station like Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay Junction every day, generating close to 3 tonnes of garbage.
A Jhansi workshop built a system 20 times bigger
To fix this, the Wagon Repair Workshop in Jhansi has developed a prototype high capacity waste collection system. The existing dustbins hold just 18 litres, while the new system will raise that to 367.4 litres, a jump of roughly 20.4 times. With this much larger capacity, coaches will take far longer to fill up, cutting down the need for repeated cleaning during a journey.
No extra machine needed, gravity does the job
The most notable part of the new setup is that moving garbage into the collection tank will not require any separate machine. A dustbin will be placed on the coach floor within passengers' reach. Right below it sits a central connector that carries the waste to a steel box fitted inside the coach, from where it drops straight into the collection tank using gravitational force. This tank will only need to be emptied during the train's regular maintenance, meaning staff will no longer have to keep entering coaches mid-journey to clear waste, making the whole cleaning process far more organised.
Rajdhani, Duronto and Vande Bharat among trains set to benefit
Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay Junction is a key station through which several major LHB trains pass daily, including Rajdhani, Duronto, Netaji, Vibhuti, Vande Bharat and Himgiri. The system is currently at the prototype and trial stage, but once it gets approval, it is expected to be fitted in all the other trains that pass through this junction as well. If the trial succeeds, the same system could eventually reach other premium trains across the country, significantly reducing passenger complaints about cleanliness on long journeys.
