Train Talk (Chai & Choo Choos)

For those wanting a bit of nostalgia please have a look at my collection of metre gauge photos from the steam era on Zenfolio.

http://mickpope.zenfolio.com/p934951696

I will be adding to the collection over the coming weeks and also to the broad and narrow gauge collections.

thanks for sharing! i had heard about the sole MG AC Chair Car coach used in SR. have you seen that?

Which route did that run on?

Found the answer at irfca!

great! apparently these were made in RCF, Kapurthala
http://www.rcf.indianrailways.gov.in...0&id=0,295,410

Golghar you inspired me to pick up Third Class Ticket to read it again, but I'm chugging along much more slowly. I've not even left Calcutta yet .

Your library is pretty good - do German libraries stock English-language books or are you reading it in translation?



I'd say that wouldn't have crossed most readers' minds! I am glad you are noticing these things .

What puzzled me when I read it first was how much of it the author actually witnessed and how much was reconstructed later from conversations with the participants and her knowledge of their personalities and the relationships within the group. She must have been with them for some of the time and her presence must have affected the way things happened and yet she puts herself into the story hardly at all - just one incident as I recall.

I won't say any more in case you are still reading it. I will go and continue with my own reading .

I saw this story from the Times of India reported on indiarailinfo today. It reminded me of "Third Class Ticket"

I've finished reading Third-Class Ticket and am now reading another interesting book* which belongs in another thread.

Yes they stock English-language books, loads of them. I have never had any problem finding a book published in the UK in a German library. Once in a while a book published in the US and out of print for some time may not be found here**. With English-language books published in India, Australia or elsewhere it's a different matter.

Heather Wood's book has never been translated into German. It might have been if it had been honestly labelled "a novel". It has just too much direct speech which can't possibly be a literal translation of what people actually said . Did she have a tape-recorder running all the time? Did the people really say these things as she writes they said them - though I still find that the language she puts into the mouths of her figures is well-constructed, if constructed it is.

It would probably have marred the flow of the narrative if she had mentioned that there were two (sets of) carriages involved, one broad-gauge and one metre-gauge. In the book the carriage becomes a character in its own right and a novelist is fully entitled to create composite characters. Which of course makes one suspect that the human characters in the book are themselves composite.

Sometimes taking liberties with the geography of railway networks may be necessary for dramatic effect. Do you know the film Julia? In it Lillian Hellman (Jane Fonda) catches a train for Berlin at the Gare du Nord in Paris and then crosses the Franco-German border. You can't and never could. All trains from the Gare du Nord to destinations in Germany have to pass through Belgium. But making the crossing through a buffer state would have removed some of the suspense from the story. To enjoy the film I had to "suspend disbelief" for a moment.

It's my bedtime now. To be continued tomorrow!

*It is called Masks of Conquest by Gauri Viswanathan and deals with the history of "English Literature" as a subject (an object?) of study in the Indian educational system. The extraordinary fact is that "English Literature" was introduced into Indian schools by the East India Company more than half a century before it became a subject of study at schools in England.
I think I'll make a post in the Who's reading what .. thread after I have finished reading this book.

**An example: Time Change by Hope Cooke

While browsing through erail I just discoverd that there are three direct trains a week from Ranchi to Hyderabad (or Secunderabad), all originating at Darbhanga. This reminded me of a journey I made with my family from Ranchi to Hyderabad in 1956.
Ranchi didn't have a broad-gauge connection then and of course the Ranchi-Hatia-Bondamunda line hadn't been built. So we went by road from Ranchi to Chakradharpur and spent some time there in the 1st class waiting room which still had punkahs on the ceiling and was illuminated by petromaxes. At some unearthly hour we took a train from there to Nagpur, changed there for Kazipet, where we finally caught a train to Secunderabad, again at an unearthly hour. How things have improved since, except I'm sure Chakradharpur station regularly falls victim to power-cuts or their euphemistic cousin "load-shedding".

Golghar

I had to look up Petromax on the internet. In the UK we call them Tilley lamps. When you say that the 1st class waiting room still had punkahs were they still operated by a man pulling on a rope?

Yes, a blind man. The railway had hundreds of them on its payroll as punkah-pullers.

Petromax was apparently the German brand name. These lamps must have originally been imported from Germany.

Till the early sixties medium-sized towns in Bihar like Sitamarhi or Jamui didn't have electricity. It was all punkahs and Petromaxes.

And I just discovered that "Chakradharpur" is spelt "Chakaradharpur" on erail. I suppose that is how locals pronounce the name.

Reminds me of a Movie that I had watched long ago on Doordarshan I think. About a man who escapes punishment by his village panchayat because he is the only one who knows how to light a Petromax required for the Village and the Panchayat meetings. The name of the movie escapes me.

This really is a most educational thread. I now know what a panchayat is (or at least what Wikipedia says it is)

I sometimes had to light Tilley lamps and their equivalents for cooking (Primus stoves) when I was on Scout camps. It was something that always made me very nervous.

Are you by any chance referring to पंचलाइट (Panchlait), the short story by Phanishwar Nath Renu? I didn't know it had been made into a film but I left India around the time television kicked in as a mass-medium. Which year was it?

Yes, You got it right.

I don't know if it was a movie or a short film kind of program. It was a long time ago. Really well made with all the nuances of village life, language, accent and thoughts brought out.

Found something here:
http://www.sarai.net/publications/re..._073_prenu.pdf
arbitspeak.blogspot.com/search/label/panchlait

Thank you.