Darjeeling Himalayan Railway - A UNESCO Heritage Site

One of the fascinations of childhood on any visit to Darjeeling in North Bengal was the ride in the "toy train". A toy train it was with its narrow-gauge track just two feet wide. The small engine would huff and puff as the driver and helper would shovel coal into the small, tub-sized boiler. Strange-sounding stations would pass - Rongtong, Tindharia, Ghayabari, Tung, Sonada and then Ghum, in the middle of a rising mist that entered through the door-way and exited through a window. Great moss-laden trees and masses of fern would brush the coaches as the train chugged on. All the while local people would hop on and hop off as if riding a tram car. It is nice to know that the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, or DHR, has been accorded UNESCO "World Heritage" status in 1999.

As is well-known the Darjeeling region came under the British administration in 1850 and the first tea garden began to to be set up in that area around 1858. While the "Hill Cart Road" had been built by about 1858, it was another twenty years before the setting up of a railway line was thought of. The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway was the first, and one of the most outstanding, example of a hill railway in India, the other two being in the Nilgiris in South India and in Kalka in the north. Opened in 1881, the DHR as it was popularly known was a marvel of design and engineering, in tackling a rise of about 2400 metres over a distance of about 88 kilometres, i.e. about 1: 25. This the train could do by way of a number of zig-zag reversing-forwarding and three loops, where the track looped around and went over a small bridge over the track it had just covered. Despite these measures, it was interesting that two persons usually sat at the front end of the ngine, throwing handfuls of sand on the tracks to improve the traction.

Now all the steam engines that had been built in the UK by Sharp, Stewart and Co, and later North British Locomotive Co. have been retired and the coaches are presently hauled by diesel operated engines built at the Chittaranjan Locomotive Works.

It was therefore very much a journey through "memory lane" recently to visit that area after so many years and to see the DHR still chugging its way around the loops and zig-zags and the tourists thoroughly enjoying themselves with the novelty of the experience. And certainly the names of Rongtong and Tindharia rang a bell. That felt good.