It is a page from a childhood scrapbook. At a bend in New Avadi Road, down a path cloaked with trees, stands the Regional Rail Museum (RRM), Chennai. A short stroll from the Furnishing division of the Integral Coach Factory (ICF), the museum is a grand walking tour of the over 160-year-old history of the Indian Railways. Scattered across 6.25 acres are art and picture galleries, parks filled with engines and carriages, and halls filled with miniatures that bring alive memories from yesterday — the hiss of leaking hot steam, the sharp toot of the brass whistle and the open rails snaking round the bend.
It’s no surprise then that you see adults everywhere, prepping children on the treasures they are about to discover. Past the ticket counter designed like a carriage is the gallery that is home to models of yesteryear coaches and trains that the Perambur Loco Works has supplied to governments across the globe. A middle-aged man points to a model of a narrow-gauge train. “See this,” he tells his grandchild. The child looks on, curious, and considers the model an oddity. The man travels back in time and speaks about journeys past with family and friends, of soot in your hair as you pass the slag heaps of Tatanagar and sticky fingers as you gorge on grapes from Gulbarga.
CHENNAI, TAMIL NADU, 24/03/2016: Exhibits at the Regional Rail Museum near ICF in Perambur, Chennai. The Rail Museum completes 14 years this month. Photo: V. Ganesan
Frames and facts
- Before the introduction of air-conditioned coaches, in the early 1860s, travellers from Bombay to Calcutta journeyed in carriages with khas khas matting; this provided a certain degree of cooling and kept at bay sun stroke or apoplexy, once frequent on trains.
- You can also take home a slice of the museum, in the form of souvenirs such as models of coaches, and greeting cards. Rates, include a toy train ride
- Children: ₹25
- Adults: ₹40
- Open from 10 am to 6 pm. Monday holiday
The picture galleries are a march of black-and-white photographs of carriages, boilers, and sprawling workspaces — offering vignettes tucked within them. Some of them have been restored by photographer-archivist ‘Poochi’ Venkat. Row after row of stands feature images that capture the long journey of the Railways since the first train ran from Bombay to Thane in 1853 — trains that did not have vacuum brakes, the life of a guard, scenic mountain railroads, and, in large part, the history of the ICF, established in 1952. There are photographs of the Swiss engineers led by Wilhelm Stolz, who lent ICF the first technology for coach building, and of guests — Queen Elizabeth II, Jawaharlal Nehru and other luminaries — who visited in the early years.
Scale models of heritage coaches puff majestically in an adjoining gallery and clocks and cutlery and old-world furniture from that Indian classic — the Railway waiting room — fill another hall. Outside, live rolling stock exhibits of the pre-Independence Beach-Tambaram train, the Hospital on Wheels and the Loco line-up perform a remarkable steam-powered opera.
Arun Devraj, Curator, RRM, Chennai, says the team managing the museum is in constant pursuit of additions to pique the interest of visitors. The well-lit art gallery, featuring contemporary works themed on the Railways by famed artists such as RM Palaniappan, V Santhanam, Asma Menon, Thejomaye Menon, Manisha Raju, Gita Hudson and Maniam Selvan, among others, is one such initiative. Through realist and abstract paintings, the artists have captured slices of life in the railways, journeys across India and scenes from a carriage window — of red-shirted porters with brass arm-bands, passengers waiting to board, the hum of life in a coach building workshop, bridges from which to toss coins, and fields spinning away in the distance.
CHENNAI, 19/03/2014: An 1895 steam operated mechanized cultivation ploughing engine, that enabled massive cultivation in 1845's in England and Ireland. Worlds 1st sucessful method of mechanical cultivation divised by 'John Fowler' of England on display at Regional Rail Museum at ICF in Chennai on Wednesday. Photo: K_Pichumani
Outside, in the evanescent cool of the evening, children crowd the three parks, clamber through the bogies, and run past the gathering shed, loco park and diamond jubilee loco park. Before you leave, ride on the toy train that chugs past the models in the garden and passes through the Jawahar tunnel, before it makes the turn to the station. Discover the romance of the rails at Bhimavaram and Bangalore, Jhumri Telaiya and Jasidih, Dundigal and Dausa, and let the memory of midnight shunting, blue night-lights and rock-bye rhythm weave their spell.
