• Railways offering 5000 coaches to be used as quarantine/isolation facilities amidst the outbreak of Covid-19
• ECoR is doing conversion in 261 coaches to serve as quarantine/isolation facilities.
Bhubaneswar: Indian Railways is taking all the necessary steps to offer assistance in nation’s fight against Covid-19 outbreak. Apart from transportation of essential commodities, supplying food to the needy, manufacturing of masks and sanitizers, Indian Railways has now started conversion of its coaches to serve as isolation/quarantine facilities.
East Coast Railway(ECoR) has taken up the task of conversion of 261 coaches to serve as isolation/quarantine facilities. This conversion will be done at different coaching depots and workshops situated across ECoR. Mancheswar Workshop will do conversion of 51 coaches, Coaching depos at Puri 39, Bhubaneswar 46, Sambalpur 32, Vishakhapatnam 60 and at Khurda Road station 33.
Till 02nd April,2020 conversion of 23 coaches have been completed, 01 each at Mancheswar and Khurda Road, 05 at Puri,06 each at Bhubaneswar and Sambalpur and 04 at Vishakhapatnam. All essential facilities required by an individual will be provided by doing necessary changes in the coaches. Mosquito nets at windows, one bathroom and three toilets in a coach, removal of middle berth, six liquid soap dispensers in each coach, four bottle holders and three dustbins in each coupe, laptop and mobile charging facilities, pillow and bedsheets, plastic curtain at both ends of aisle area, mug and buckets in the bathrooms etc. will be provided. Apart from these facilities necessary medical facilities like oxygen cylinders will also be provided. First cabin of each coach will be used for store/paramedics area and other cabins will be used for patients. After conversion of these coaches, It will be attached to form trains and will be kept at different station where all the medical facilities will be available. It has been decided to keep 03 trains at Bhubaneswar, 02 at Khurda Road, 02 at Sambalpur, 01 at Titlagarh, 03 at Vishakhapatnam, 01 at Vizianagaram, 01 at Cuttack and 02 at Puri. Target date for conversion of all the coaches is 15th April, 2020 and East Coast Railway has pooled all its resources to complete the task in time.