Salute Her Highness

Steam locos . . . old steam locos get retired and scrapped and cut and then sold, and this is in the hundreds . . . some find their ways to museums (the most famous one being the Rail Museum in Delhi, often shown in movies but not to full effect) both sarkar and private . . . the Darjeeling Steam engines (narrow gauge) are now a heritage thing . . . elsewhere some amount of shunting and factory engines are still steam but mostly it is diesel/electric and electric all the way . . . you may still find steam in commercial service on some metre gauge sectors but with increasingly rapid gauge conversions to broad gauge, even the slowest of passenger trains now are headed by ``non-steam`` . . . a good place to go steam engine spotting would be Jamalpur/Eastern Railway on the Sultanganj Loop Line where the Railways also trains its engineers . . . the Fairy Queen used to be parked there for decades before it was brought to Delhi . . . the best way for anybody, still, would be to buy an ``Indrailpass`` and travel free range . . . and not to miss the Konkan Railway.

Aah. Railways. That`s all for now.

One rarely gets to see steam engines in India. A couple of decades ago they were common sights, even hauling passenger trains. I doubt they are in use anymore (someone can correct me on this). I wonder what happened to all of them (probably hundreds of them). Is there a graveyard for decommissioned steam engines? The sight of the fireman and enginedriver on a steam engine is a sight to behold as is the sound of these black beauties as they hissed into the platform. Somehow the drivers on electric and diesel trains dont exude that mystery.

An exquisite distraction this. Welcome to chowk and its overly acerbic sublimely insensentive but always intellectually stimulating crowd.

Re : The Article
Rajendra welcome to chowk. Another train that one must travel on is Palace on Wheels in Rajisthan. I must commend the Indian Railway’s on the way they maintain our old Trains. The Indian Railway museum is really a national treasure.

Regards,

Faruk.