Train Talk (Chai & Choo Choos)

That comes from using an italic font. That is meant to be an "ell". In Marathi it turns up in the most (for a Hindi speaker) unexpected places.

@paramiyer
That was in the 1960s

@JuliaF
It says "Finish today's work today, don't leave it for tomorrow!"

Julia

Great thread about Katwa. I'm sorry to have missed that one. I also remember the Sandbanks ferry from childhood holidays - never thought that of looking on India Mike for a piccie though!

We aren't getting much on surviving metre gauge trips. This is a link to a UK rail forum where these pictures were posted recently

http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=63833

Last March we traveled with the meter gauge train from Chhindwara to Sausar. Not a very spectacular trip apart from the last downhill part.
Everywhere were signs of the upcoming conversion and according to this article in the Times of India this stretch is closed now.

Here are some photo's

That route was narrow-gauge (2'6") and not metre-gauge (3'3.7"). There is/was a whole narrow-gauge system run by the SER (South-Eastern Railway, formerly Bengal-Nagpur Railway - BNR) in the Nagpur-Jabalpur region. The TOI headline does mention "narrow-gauge".

But thanks for the pictures. The station the train is approaching in the uppermost picture is Bhimalgondi. I just checked at erail: There are three train-pairs a day through that station, two Nagpur-Chhindwara passengers and one Nagpur-Jabalput passenger.

Which is the station in the lowermost picture?

Thanks for the correction.

The station on the lowermost picture is Chhindwara Junction.

Looks very inviting. I've never been there but now I think I should.
And BTW, in a thread like this one you should specify 2' narrow-gauge or 2'6" narrow-gauge. The Darjeeling railway has the former, the Simla and the BNR-system the latter.

The Matheran is also 2' gauge. I'm not aware of any others that were on this gauge.

I went on a narrow gauge train from Nagpur a couple of years ago, if I remember right, I was going to go most of the train's route, then change to another train, but the train was running late, so I got off at Kuhi station, had a look around town, had some food and drink, then headed back to the station for the return train to Nagpur, here's some photos.















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Looking at the railbus.......

Anyone been on a Railboat?

Are we talking train ferries here?

No, a train that runs on top of the water.

I noticed one operating on the Kollam-Alleppey route.

I'm intrigued. Google has come up with zip. Do tell more.

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The Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrow_...lways_in_India only mentions Darjeeling and Matheran. The plains lines were probably all 2'6".
The list in this Wikipedia entry is not exhaustive. In my childhood days the entire Purulia-Muri-Ranchi-Lohardaga line was also narrow-gauge. Note that a station on the broad-gauge Barka Kana-Chandrapura section is called "Ranchi Road". People travelling from Patna to Ranchi (then "summer capital" of Bihar) took a train to Ranchi Road and proceeded from there to Ranchi by road. The Chandrapura-Kotshila line didn't exist then and there was a train called the "Patna-Tatanagar Fast Passenger" (Tata Passenger for short) that ran a zigzag route Patna-Gaya-Gomoh-Barka Kana-Muri-Chandil-Tatanagar. One left Patna in the evening and reached Ranchi Road early in the morning.

@paramiyer
There was a way of getting out of New Delhi station without surrendering your ticket:
You walked down Platform 1 in the direction of Connaught Place till you got to the chain separating it from the "State Entry" platform where the President's (formerly Viceroy's) train used to depart and arrive. If the President didn't happen to be travelling that day there was no guard and the barrier was low enough to jump over (or high enough to crawl under). Then one simply exited the platform where the President normally did and walked down State Entry Road to the Outer Circle of Connaught Place. I think S. Radhakrishnan was the last President to use that train and platform. When he left office in 1967 he took that train to Madras and retirement.

As for railboats and train ferries: Till the 1960's there was a metre-gauge train running on the Bhagalpur-Bararighat-Mahadeopurghat-Thana Bihpur route. Between the two ghats the train was ferried across the Ganga on a barge.

According to Ronik24 (it was his link to some metre gauge stuff I put up in #47) the Gwalior - Sheopur Kalan line is the longest 610mm (2'0") gauge line in the world. His photos, taken earlier this year, are tremendous. It is apparently still possible to roof ride on Indian trains.

http://railroadforums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=39597