City rail division leader in SWR’s green initiatives

The South Western Railway (SWR) has converted 18 of 32 trains between Bengaluru and Mysuru from diesel to electric traction, reducing their running cost by 40%.

The conversion has saved 1,260 litres of diesel for each pair of trains. Officials also said slow-moving diesel trains have been converted into Mainline Electric Multiple Units.

On the occasion, Divisional Railway Manager Ashok Kumar Verma unveiled SWR’s first vertical garden at the KSR Bengaluru station.

“In the past one year, we have developed about 50 gardens around the Bengaluru division. This will continue in the upcoming year and we will make this division even more beautiful. Today, we are planting more than 5,000 trees here,” he said. A total of 38,072 trees have been planted across the railway land.

The division has also taken up the project to set up solar panels. The total installed capacities of the solar panels over the SBC division was 805 kWp, where 1 kWp will generate 1,500 units of electricity annually.

The railways hopes to save Rs 42.63 lakh per year through this initiative.

In a first of its kind initiative in SWR, the Bengaluru division also installed eight 7.5 HP and eight 5 HP solar pumps to promote renewable energy. These pumps, said to generate 1.63 lakh units of electricity, will save Rs 14.17 lakh annually.

Two recycling plants — one at the KSR station with 10 lakh litre capacity and 60-70% utilisation and another at the Yeshwantpur station with 4 lakh litre capacity and 50% utilisation — were installed. Both these stations save Rs 30 lakh every month in the bill amount paid to BWSSB.

In another major green effort, the Bengaluru division has taken up solid waste management mainly from railway residential colonies from where the biodegradable waste will be sent to compost sheds and non-biodegradable waste handed to the BBMP-appointed waste collectors. Adopting the Miyawaki plantation method, the division planted 2,000 saplings in 600 sqm in 2016 and 2,100 saplings in 650 sqm in 2017. It began recharging borewells and composting kitchen waste at the Krishnarajapuram diesel loco shed.

(Akira Miyawaki is a Japanese botanist and expert in plant ecology, who is active worldwide as a specialist in the restoration of natural vegetation on degraded land.)