It has been a year since R. K. Puram was connected to Vaishali station on the Delhi Metro Railway’s Blue Line, just that only those residents who attend primary school had a clue.
To visitors, the train may seem like it has a fetish for speed and over the past 365 days two coaches were reduced to one but it is the only model at the Children’s Resource Centre (CRC) in R. K. Puram – a facility set up by the civic body’s Education Department – that has kept pace with the changes in the Capital.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
Running on electricity, the train does the loops at the ‘Transportation’ section at the CRC flanked by bullock-carts and references to space travel.
Around the tracks are houses, autos, trees and roads. Every few seconds it drives under the sign that says ‘Vaishali’ and comes back to closer to where the visitor stands: peering through a hole that is meant to hold a glass.
“Last year, when it was time to replace our city diorama model, we proposed to replace it with a working model of a metro train,” says assistant curator Dhruv Prasad Soni.
ADVERTISEMENT
“We got in touch with the person in charge of the Metro Museum at Patel Chowk and asked them to help us set it up,” he says.
While the Metro Museum only recently got its own working model, “this train has celebrated its first birthday already,” says Mr. Soni.