Greater Anglia reveals stats behind keeping train carriages sanitised

Greater Anglia has used over 26,500 litres of anti-viral disinfectant in the last 12 months as the company has stepped up cleaning and sanitising inside trains to keep rail passengers safe in the pandemic.

The company’s rigorous sanitisation regime includes using a total of seven fogging guns every night at four depots across the network to spray a fine mist of anti-viral disinfectant inside train carriages to kill off bacteria and viruses in the air, on floors, furniture, walls, ceilings and other surfaces.

Around 80 carriage interiors a day are cleaned with fogging guns and all of Greater Anglia’s trains in passenger service are fogged every 28 days.

In addition, Greater Anglia cleaners board trains at each destination on turnaround to clean washrooms, wipe down tables and other high touch areas such as door handles and push buttons, empty bins and litter pick throughout the train.

They go through the train with one of the company’s eight powerful Pacvac backpack cleaners and spot vacuum floors. The vacuum cleaners clean air as well as the floor and upholstery through four stages of filtration. Every carriage is cleaned again at night, too.

To make sure that cleaning regimes are as effective and efficient as possible, train cleaning managers use special hygiene monitoring units to carry out an average of five tests a night to check for biological residue on high touch surfaces inside train carriages.

A total of 160 tests per 28-day period are taken, which managers analyse to ensure optimal sanitisation conditions.

In the last six months, the company has commissioned an independent testing company, SOCOTEC to conduct four different tests once a month on board five randomly-picked trains from different Greater Anglia routes at Liverpool Street Station, including tests for Covid – which have all come back negative.

Last year, Greater Anglia recruited an extra 28 on board cleaners, bringing the total size of the team to 344. The team has been assisted by 15 catering staff per day, while on board catering has been suspended.

In total, Greater Anglia has spent £600,000 on new cleaning measures, detergents, equipment and staff to keep the interiors of trains as hygienic as possible.

Martin Moran, Greater Anglia’s commercial, customer service and train presentation director said: "It’s important that our customers feel safe when travelling with us, so it’s worth every penny and all the hard work of each of my team members to keep our trains clean and sanitised.

"We would also ask customers to play their part by washing or sanitising their hands regularly and either taking litter away with them or putting it in the bin so my team can spend more time cleaning rather than litter picking."

At the moment, Government advice is to minimise travel, plan journeys in advance and travel at less busy times.