Coronavirus: How Greater Anglia is keeping its trains clean with biological monitoring and fogging guns
Biological detection units, fogging guns and Ghostbusters-style backpacks… welcome to train travel in 2020.
Greater Anglia, which runs services through Cambridge, has rolled out a host of measures to ensure its trains are cleaned as effectively as possible amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Five 3M hygiene monitoring units are being used weekly to detect biological residue on high touch areas on board trains.
A swab is taken from an area and checked for adenosine triphosphate (ATP), an indicator of biological residues, using a self-contained device.
In it, the swab sample reacts with a lab-manufactured enzyme that replicates one found in fireflies called luciferase. Energy from the reaction creates light, meaning the more light detected, the greater the amount of biological residue on the surface tested.
The test results are then synchronised with Greater Anglia’s servers, so that train cleaning managers get a picture of the efficiency of the cleaning regimes across the network and adjust accordingly.
Greater Anglia said this is just the latest piece of equipment in its arsenal of cleaning and sanitising equipment.
It has spent £600,000 on new cleaning measures, including equipment, extra cleaning routines, new and additional detergents and more staff.
Seven fogging guns are now in use to spray a fine targeted mist of anti-viral disinfectant, which quickly kills off bacteria and viruses in the air, on floors, furniture, walls, ceilings, other surfaces and large internal areas.
Every carriage on Greater Anglia’s trains was ‘fogged’ by the start of September, and the company is now going around them again.
The company’s cleaning contractors also use fogging guns to sanitise waiting rooms, toilets and other areas at stations.
For ‘turnaround cleaning’ of trains at stations between the arrival of one service and departure of the next, Greater Anglia also has eight powerful Pacvac backpack vacuum cleaners, fitted with four filters which clean the air as well as the floor and upholstery.
Peter Tyler, Greater Anglia head of train presentation, said: “We’re doing everything we possibly can to keep our trains as clean and sanitised as possible.
“This new testing equipment enables us to check that our cleaning is as effective as possible, so that our customers can travel with us, confident that they are being kept safe.
“Our cleaning teams have been doing a great job and have really stepped up to the mark to keep everyone safe.
“Other staff, including our catering and station teams, have also stepped in to carry out additional cleaning on high touch areas such as ticket barriers and ticket machine touch screens.”
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