Secunderabad railway station heads towards energy efficiency, bags award for beautification

With escalators at all 10 platforms and lifts installed, and a host of new passenger amenities added recently, Secunderabad railway station (SCR) has become one of the most user-friendly stations in the country now. The once congested and inconvenient railway station has now transformed into a beautiful, spacious and extremely clean premises, and recently won an award in the category of the most beautiful stations in the country.

Vinod Kumar Yadav, General Manager, South Central Railways said that apart from improving amenities for passengers, the station has become one of the most energy efficient premises in the country. “We want that all passengers including physically challenged and elderly people should be able to go to any part of the station and cross platforms without any difficulty. We want to provide escalators and lifts, or either escalator or a lift at every platform which can be used to access the foot over bridge to move around the station. We have installed escalators at all 10 platforms now, and we will soon have lifts also which will help the elderly and physically challenged at all the platforms,’’ Yadav added.

The SCR has also modified the ground floor of the iconic station built in 1874 and created a spacious general waiting hall which has helped to decongest platform no 1. SCR has also introduced paid AC waiting halls at the station which can be availed if some passengers do not want to use the normal waiting hall. “If someone gets down at Secunderabad and he does not have enough time to check into a hotel before rushing to a meeting or keeping an appointment, he can check into the AC waiting hall at the station. The tariff is Rs 150-Rs 300 and the person gets a shower kit, a water bottle, and a cup of tea,’’ Yadav said.

The station which runs on 40-510 per cent solar power has installed all energy efficient equipment including a 100 per cent coverage of LED lights.

To overcome one of the biggest challenges of water shortage in the area, the SCR has started recycling water that is used for cleaning of coaches and platform. “We have now started treating and recycling the water using our own plant. We use it only for cleaning, as 100 per cent water cannot be recycled, we top up the tanks with fresh water. We are saving crores annually by recycling water, which we otherwise had to buy,’’ says Yadav.

Secunderabad railway station will soon be the first in the country to use all the solid waste collected in the premises to generate electricity. “The work is going on and in about six months we will be the first station in the country to use the solid waste generated energy to produce power at the station. Through a Corporate Social Responsibility of a company, a plant is being set up at Secunderabad railway station which will convert all the solid waste into power to be used at the station.

“How much power is produced is not important, the fact that the entire solid waste is used up to produce electricity is significant. Earlier we used to put this entire solid waste on municipal garbage collection trucks which used to dump the waste somewhere nearby. By doing so we were only adding to the problem of garbage pile-up. Now, we don’t have to worry about that. All our solid waste goes into the plant to generate power,’’ said Yadav.