LOTUS WASH SYSTEM PROJECTS

FULLY AUTOMATED EXTERNAL CLEANING TRAINWASH FACILITY

Customer request – To create a new fully automated trainwash facility for external cleaning of city rail trains to a high standard in Adelaide Australia.

Specific Requirements – To cater for 2 different shapes and configuration of coaches, to wash the front and rear of the trainsets, 100 coaches to be washed twice a week, to minimise water usage, to configure the plant to allow for future electrification, allow for future coach design change, assist in overcoming graffiti problems - complete design from the ground up.

Lotus designed the site and building layout requirements for the client allowing for the main wash building, ancillary plant building, water catchment and services provision. Machine design incorporated a pre wash facility, chemical application, front and rear wash brush sets, 2 sets of contoured side brushes, high and low pressure rinse system and surface conditioning application plant.

Water usage minimisation was achieved by the design of a specialised recirculation plant to treat all collected water with a mechanical filtration and settling along with biological treatment plant to remove chemical contamination from the water. This created clean usable potable water. The balance of makeup was provided from water collected on the site and fed through a local swamp area and pumped from an aquifer which is then treated through the plant prior to use. This mechanism allowed that no mains water is required to run the plant.

The surface conditioning application was not only to add to the train appearance but also to prevent the adhesion of graffiti spray which had been a very costly maintenance issue. Build and installation time frame for the plant was 26 weeks however since this was a part of a complete new maintenance depot for the railways the site works and buildings took some time to complete prior to installation.

Outcome – The wash plant completely changed the appearance of the Adelaide fleet from dirty and scruffy to bright and shiny capable of cleaning one coach every 20 seconds exceeding the customer’s expectations.