MY interest right from my childhood days include watching the movement of steam trains on the now 110-years old Nilgiri Mountain Railway. It is of great concern nowadays that just a solitary train runs for the entire 46-kilometre route from Mettupalayam to Udhagamandalam.
I have traversed the line in its heyday, prior to the late 1960s when four pairs of passenger trains ran regularly each way powered by Swiss-built coal-fired steam engine. This was apart from the few freight trains that operated daily carrying food materials, besides ammunition for the units stationed at Wellington.
As the engines aged, and spares became scarce, cannibalising of spares was resorted to with a view to maintaining the essential services. So, some engines were kept in a fit condition to operate on the steep rack section between Kallar and Coonoor, and the engines which were unfit to operate on the rack were used on the easy gradient between Coonoor and Ooty. A locomotive change thus became necessary at Coonoor. This arrangement continued but services took a downturn and the number of trains was reduced from four trains to just two each way. A derailment of a ‘coal special’ in February 1982 put a full stop to all freight services on the line. Now, the railways operate a solitary train each way because of the pressure from the public to maintain the services.
Though more trains run between Coonoor and Ooty to serve the local populace, these are powered by the boxlike metre-gauge diesel locomotive brought in from the mainline network in the plains.
It is a sad commentary on this scenic line that several stations lay in a decrepit state. The gangmen’s quarters beside the track and cottages for the stationmasters fell into disuse, and forest vegetation took over the abandoned structures.
Tracks for crossing trains were uprooted.
The goods sheds at the military stations of Wellington and Aravankadu were closed, as also the vast yard at Ooty which is now an open grassland.
Despite the surge in revenue of the railway department, this scenic mountain line appears to be on an odyssey to oblivion in spite of its inscription as a World Heritage Site. The solitary train from Mettupalayam nowadays runs behind schedule due to poor quality coal and failure of the steam engine in the densely forested route, and the travellers are a harassed lot, with no thought to improving the service. It is said ‘trains on this line run more on newspaper columns than on actual rails’.
The government appears to be bent upon dismantling the line, but public protest has kept it going. As it is, the present generation of children will never get to see a steam engine in action — a sight of unalloyed joy to the viewer, whether a child or the elderly. Barring two mountain railways in India — the NMR in Ooty, and the DHR in Darjeeling, steam traction has been erased from public memory.
The child-in-me overruled my senses and I embarked on a journey to experience the fury of steam on the NMR by taking the first bus downhill at six in the morning to be on time to catch the train from Mettupalayam back to Coonoor.
It was a nostalgic journey of 27 kilometres and one of enlightenment. I relived the days when I used to commute regularly on this route by the erstwhile Blue Mountain Express.