Ooty Train Turns 100

Wednesday, the historic mountain train, also called the Queen of hills will start a new journey up Nilgiri hills. Having completed its centenary run, the charming blue and cream train will look forward to many more years of huffing and puffing up the hills. The first mountain train powered by Swiss Automotive engine reached the abodes of Udhagmandalam (Ooty) on October 15, 1908. Those days, people were carried in dollies or walked a bridle path or on horsebacks to reach Ooty. Then slowly came the bullock-carts and chariots, which were used by the affluent class. The plan of building a mountain railway from Mettupalayam to the Nilgiri Hills was conceived in 1854 and it took a good 45 years to come to reality.

In 1899, the first train chugged up the track from Mettupalayam till Coonoor and it is still considered a marvel of engineering. Later on October 15, 1908, the train was extended to Ooty from Coonoor. Today, 100 years later, the Nilgiri Mountain Railway continues to serve people, mostly tourists. The average gradient is 1 in 12,28 feet and the 44.88 km railway line is the steepest in Asia.

Thetrain(also called Toy Train) travels through 208 curves, 16 tunnels and 31 major bridges. The train is scheduled to connect to the Nilgiri Express, which travels from Mettupalayam to Chennai. A summer special service is run during the months of April and May. Between Coonoor and Udagamandalam there are four trains daily. Despite incurring a loss of Rs 6 crore every year, the NMR, which was accorded the World Heritage Site status by the UNESCO, will continue to run, said union minister for state for railways R Velu recently.

He added that railways have placed orders with a manufacturer in Switzerland for four steam engines for NMR, each costing around Rs 10 crore. The Salem division spent about Rs 1.95 crore to upgrade passenger amenities at Ooty, Coonoor and Mettupalayam. “The stations were improved with laying of platform surfaces apart from building shelters and toilets,” said Om Prakash, PRO Salem division. He further said the railways would spend another Rs 63 lakhs for improving the circulating area in the three major stations.

Mr Prakash added that nearly 365 employees are working in the 44.88 km area of NMR and most of them are engineering staff. A senior employee told ET that if a separate administrative team, delinked from the Southern Railway, is set up and a special officer appointed , the NMR would fare better. Dharmalingam Vengopal, director, Nilgiris Documentation Centre said the Railways should seriously think of some kind of autonomy on the lines of Darjeeling Mountain Railway, which is run by an autonomous body and not just consider it as one more train in the Salem division.

Toy Train is picture perfect APART from tourists, the mountain train was a favourite of Bollywood and Kollywood. Day dreaming about his sweetheart, Joy Mukherji loses his suitcase in a Nilgiri Railway coach in 1964 in the movie ‘Ziddi’. In ‘Zamaane Ko Dikhana Hai’, Padmini Kolhapure, a poor girl wins over Rishi Kapoor who is pretending to be a rich boy. When the secret is revealed, she tries to run away from him, sitting on the lead carriage of the NMR.

The boy follows her and serenades her back with ‘Hoga tumse pyaraa kaun he kanchi’ on top of the train before it reaches Mettupalayam. What propelled the train to the box office hit was the song “Chaiyan chaiyan” in Mani Ratnam’s film ‘Dil Se’. Shot in 1998, Shahrukh Khan danced to the tunes atop the train. The most poignant scene shot at the Coonoor railway station was the last scene of the Tamil Movie ‘Moondram Pirai,’ in which a rejuvenated Sridevi is unable to recognise Kamal Hassan despite his enacting all tricks to kindle her memory. The most popular English movie shot at Nilgiris was David Lean’s ‘A Passage to India.’

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