Erode junction struggles to refill water in trains

“We are as helpless as the farmers in the State. River Cauvery was the main source of water for filling trains when they passed through Erode Junction, the main water filling source in Salem Railway Division. With the river going dry, we are finding it difficult to fill water in the trains,” a senior railway official said. 

Erode Junction is a Clean Train station where long distance trains are cleaned and refilled with water during a 20-minute break. The station caters to 133 mail, express and passenger trains on a day-today basis. 

A coach has the water tank capacity of 900 litres and a train with 24 coaches would need 21,600 litres. High tech filling systems (Camtech Water Systems) is used to quicken the water filling process.

“In all, 133 trains would need a mammoth 28.72 lakh litres to be filled at the junction. Even if the coaches had 20 per cent water, we should be filling 23 lakh litres a day. After the river dried, we are drawing water from borewells in railway land alongside the banks of the river. We are able to suck this quantity from them but the water is muddy due to the fast depleting underground water table,” the official said.

The official also said that due to the poor quality of water, the water purification filters are often spoilt, this season, leaving the engineering department with no other option but to carry out repair and maintenance works on a war footing. 

“It takes hours to days for carrying out the repair works depending on the extent of damage to the filters,” he said and added this scenario would be inevitable till the water table rises.

Divisional Railway Manager of Salem Division of Southern Railways Hari Shanakr Verma said that they have alerted approaching stations to Salem Division, including Palakkad, Jolarpet and Dindigul to fill water for trains for a couple of days, till the ongoing repair works are completed. He also made an appeal to passengers to understand the situation of railway officials and refrain from resorting to road blockades.