Mountain Railways of India
This site includes three
railways. The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway was the first, and is
still the most outstanding, example of a hill passenger railway. Opened in
1881, its design applies bold and ingenious engineering solutions to the
problem of establishing an effective rail link across a mountainous terrain of
great beauty. The construction of the Nilgiri Mountain Railway, a
46-km long metre-gauge single-track railway in Tamil Nadu State was first
proposed in 1854, but due to the difficulty of the mountainous location the
work only started in 1891 and was completed in 1908. This railway, scaling an
elevation of 326 m to 2,203 m, represented the latest technology of the time. The
Kalka Shimla Railway, a 96-km long, single track working rail link built
in the mid-19th century to provide a service to the highland town of Shimla is
emblematic of the technical and material efforts to disenclave mountain
populations through the railway. All three railways are still fully
operational.
No comments:
Post a Comment