Air conditioner for rail vehicle

An air conditioner for a rail vehicle including a vehicle control system, the air conditioner comprising:

• a refrigeration cycle device that can execute a cleaning operation;
• and
• an air conditioning control device that controls the refrigeration cycle device,
• wherein the air conditioning control device can communicate with the vehicle control system, has a built-in clock, and has access to at least one of stored vehicle operation time information or stored cooling period information, and
• wherein, based at least on the air conditioning control device determining from the built-in clock and the at least one of the stored vehicle operation time information or the stored cooling period information that a current time is at least one of (1) outside vehicle operating hours or (2) within a cooling period during which the refrigeration cycle device is operated, the air conditioning control device causes the refrigeration cycle device to execute the cleaning operation on a basis of status information obtained from the vehicle control system.