Tech upgrades make life easier for railway maintainers in Harbin

Despite the many technological advances such as heating and creature comforts like thick clothing and warm blankets, winter is a challenge for everyone. But one group of people may have it a little harder than the average person, and they are the railway workers in Harbin. Every winter since the 2012 high-speed railway launch, the train maintainers in the northeast city must deal with the ice and snow stuck underneath the train cars.

Harbin is one of the coldest cities in China, where temperatures often dip below minus 20 degrees Celsius. While ice and snow are a given in such conditions, one place they are not welcome is underneath the train cars where they pose a safety risk. This annual battle of man against nature recently ended with a clear victor – the railway workers – all thanks to the application of new technology that will make ice and snow removal easier and more efficient.

"We must do the cleaning first in order to begin the normal checking procedure," said Zhou Xiulong, who's in charge of maintaining the trains.

For years, Zhou's team had to use rakes and mallets to manually remove the ice and snow. What's worse is that they had to use rubber tools to avoid scratching the car, making ice removal an achingly slow process.

It usually took the 16-person team 4 hours to clean up an eight-car train.

In 2017, the Harbin branch of China State Railway Group invented a new tool for ice removal. The tool was basically an electric water sprayer modified for this specific task. It can shoot hot water at the ice to melt it.

The pump is so powerful that the fan-shaped water spray can "cut into the ice," Zhou said.

During the six years of use, Zhou's team has upgraded the tool to the fourth generation, adding features like constant water temperature and pressure.

"The pressure remains stable no matter how many spray heads we are using," Zhou told China Media Group (CMG). "We can do the work together to finish it in a much shorter time."

Despite their success, the engineers are still not satisfied with the current tool. They are also building automatic machines to enable just two people to clean the whole train in an hour.