Latest wave of stations treated with 30-day virus killer

More pictures and video at the bottom of this press release

Thameslink, Great Northern and Southern are treating their stations to the latest round of sanitisation, which uses a special product that kills viruses for up to 30 days.

Parent company Govia Thameslink Railway has been using the viruscide at stations and on board its trains since May to supplement its already-enhanced cleaning regime.

The 30-day viruscide treatment is repeated every 21 days and the most recent wave of cleaning is taking place at stations including St Albans and Brighton, Flitwick, Harlington, Worthing, Hassocks, Oxted and Plumpton.

High-pressure dry steam and microfibre units are first used to thoroughly clean before electrostatic wands and backpack misting devices coat surfaces with the product, forming a molecular bond.

GTR Engineering Director Steve Lammin said: “Our travel safer pledge means we are taking extra steps to protect people from the coronavirus by boosting cleaning with this 30-day viruscide, providing touch-free hand sanitisers, and running as many trains as possible.

“I would remind passengers to avoid the busy times of the day, wash or sanitise your hands before and after each journey, wear face coverings, maintain social distancing, and if possible buy your ticket in advance or pay by contactless.”

Thameslink, Great Northern and Southern have all posted details of busy trains and stations to avoid on their websites so that passengers can plan their journeys with confidence. These alerts are also attached to trains in the National Rail Enquiries online journey planner www.nationalrail.co.uk.

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Editor's notes

The 30-day viruscide is part of a series of measures to keep passengers as safe as possible, that include:

• 100 extra cleaning staff at work: 40,000 extra labour hours in three months to enhance the cleanliness of our stations, trains and staff areas.
• All 2,700 carriages across Thameslink, Great Northern, Southern and Gatwick Express are sanitised overnight using specially-procured short-term anti-viral sprays, with a focus on passenger touchpoints
• Switch to focus on passenger and staff touchpoints from the start: wiping down places passengers touch such as ticket machines, chip and pin machines, door buttons, tables, grab poles and handles, really focusing to make sure they are clean and safe
• 21,600 touchpoint cleans in three months (7,200 a month) on stations and in staff areas
• New techniques – high-pressure dry steam and microfibre units are used for enhanced cleaning. Bleach fogging is used for decontamination where someone has been confirmed as having Covid-19

Social distancing measures:

• One-way and queuing systems at the busiest stations
• 19,000 floor signs across the network and 25,000 train signs, posters, adverts and announcements reminding people to socially distance
• 1,000 touch-free hand sanitiser points have been bought for stations
• We have developed a staff app to monitor passenger volumes and movements to identify ‘hot spots’ across the network – uses data from trains, ticket sales, ticket gates, and from staff seeing where social distancing may not be being observed. We use this information to highlight the busiest trains in journey planners and modify our service where possible
• We have updated our smartcard the ‘Key’ so that passenger can not only buy their season tickets on their mobile phone but then load them on to their smartcard by tapping the card on the phone. This saves passengers having to use ticket machines and ticket offices.