Planning a trip to Shimla in the near future? Here’s some good news for you! In order to give a more comfortable toy train experience to the passengers, Indian Railways will replace the British era coaches with new luxurious coaches in the next 10 months. The Rail Coach Factory in Punjab’s Kapurthala is in the process of manufacturing about 30 coaches which will be on the tracks by the end of next year. The new coaches will be based on LHB technology with stainless steel. The lightweight shells are being designed with large windows and a vista dome of glass on the roof. The new coaches will pass through two trails to test the stability of the structure.
“The process will take time as they will have to go through two tests. The first will be with only the shell and bogie to test for structural stability and then when it is cleared, the final test will be started,” an official said. ,
The Kalka-Shimla route has toy trains like Kalka-Shimla Passenger, Shivalik Express, Kalka-Shimla Express, Himalayan Queen and Rail Motor. There are about 20 stations on this route and the trains pass through about 900 curves. There are three other narrow-gauge routes where toy trains run which are in Darjeeling, Pathankot and Ooty.
In addition, railway officials have an ambitious plan to reduce the speed of the historic Kalka Shimla toy train by two hours. Sources said it has been put on the back burner. According to him, steep curves, slopes and lack of lateral space are making it technically impossible to drive a toy train at high speed.
At the request of the Himachal Pradesh government, the Railways has conducted a study over the last two years to see whether the toy train can be run at a higher speed. In 2018, the Northern Railway got the Research Design and Standards Organization (RDSO) to assess whether the speed of the Kalka-Shimla toy train could be increased.
“It is a very difficult project. Efforts to straighten it have failed due to high curvature and lack of lateral space. It is not technically feasible. A final decision is yet to be taken after the completion of the RDSO study Though it seems that the speed of the toy train can be increased beyond a point,” said an official.
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One reason for this is that the expense incurred to make the changes suitable for a faster toy train barely justifies the gain in speed of 3 to 4 kmph. However, an official reply from the Railways on the status of the project is awaited. “The project is on hold at the moment,” said a source.
Officials also highlight the limitations presented by the area, with 62 landslides being experienced in this calendar year itself. Sources said that around 90 per cent of the track is full of curvature and the steepest is 24 degrees. “It (the train’s) slow speed has not resulted in any accident on the route,” an official said.
At present the speed of the train is 22-25 kmph and there are plans to increase it to 30-35 kmph. The slow-moving toy train on the narrow-gauge rail route was awarded UNESCO World Heritage Site status 10 years ago.
(with inputs from PTI)