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.