Nearly three years after the services of Darjeeling Himalayan Railways (DHR) was stopped, it is expected to resume services between Siliguri and Darjeeling this winter.
A.K. Sharma, a divisional railway manager (DRM) of North East Frontier Railway, A. K. Sharma told The Hindu that work was pending on a small patch between Darjeeling hills and Siliguri and was expected to be completed in a few months.
The ‘toy train’ was started in 1881, when Sir Ashley Eden was the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal. The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway prominently features in UNESCO’s Heritage site and was truncated following massive landslides along its 87 km route in 2011.
“We hope to complete the remaining work between Mahanadi and Gaya Bari, by the end of the year. It should be over by the end of the year,” said Mr Sharma. Landslides in Tindharia and Paglajhora stopped the service in 2011.
Mr. Sharma said that along with the Railways, the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) and West Bengal’s Public Works Department were involved in the repair work. Expressing concern that the heritage railways was not running its full stretch for quite some time, Darjeeling MP S.S. Ahluwalia had raised the issue with Railway Minister Sadananda Gowda, who had written to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on the matter.
Mr. Alhuwalia said that Mr. Gowda had also assured of a “comprehensive conservation and management plan” for the heritage railway line that would make all the stakeholders — the Railway Ministry, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, and the local municipalities — be answerable to meeting the needs of the DHR in a time-bound manner.
Expressing hope that complete services would open by the end of the year, Kurseong MLA Rohit Sharma said that floods due to incessant rain were depositing boulders on the National Highway 55 along which the railway tracks were laid. Mr. Sharma said that the issue of repair of NH 55 was recently taken up Gorkhaland Territorial Administration chief executive Bimal Gurung with the Union Road Transport Ministry.
