Konkan Railway Corporation Ltd. (KRCL) has replaced power-guzzling high pressure sodium vapour (HPSV) lamps in its railway tunnels with light emitting diode (LED) lamps, which were dedicated on the occasion of World Environment Day on Friday.
As many as 1.41 lakh LED bulbs have found a place in 91 tunnels of KRCL across coastal Karnataka, Goa and Maharashtra.
The total length of these tunnels is about 84 km, out of the 736-km Konkan rail road.
In a release here, KRCL said that with the installation of LED bulbs, the corporation has considerably reduced carbon footprint thereby contributing to energy conservation and environment preservation.
Each 24 Watt LED bulb would consume just one-third of the energy used by 70 Watt HPSV bulbs, Konkan Railway said.
It has also provided energy saver equipment in all its tunnels which controls current voltage so that the current drawn is less.
Besides installing LED bulbs, KRCL has taken up small initiatives such as phasing out all incandescent bulbs from railway premises and replacing them with more energy-efficient T5 fittings, and changing all resistance-type fan regulators to electronic ones.
Konkan Railway has switched over to green energy with the installation of solar plants at Ratnagiri and Karmali stations and installing solar geysers at all its running rooms and rest houses.
It has also taken up planting saplings in a big way on an annual basis along the entire rail route which has given it a unique identification as “Garden Railway”. As many as 53,699 saplings of various types of plants were planted last year along the Konkan route, while 28,000 would be planted during this monsoon.
Konkan Railway is planting an average 30,000 saplings per year on its network. A specific type of Vetiveri grass was also planted to help hold the soil together.
