Headlines
Kalka-Shimla toy train derails, two Britons killed
Parwanoo (Himachal Pradesh), Sep 12
Two
Britons were killed and seven others injured on Saturday when two
coaches of a chartered Kalka-Shimla toy train hired by a group of 37
foreigners derailed near this Himachal Pradesh town, a police officer
said.
The dead were one man and a woman, Kalka station
superintendent V.K. Arora told IANS over the telephone. The injured were
admitted to the PGI hospital in Chandigarh, 30 km from the accident
spot.
Over-speeding at a curve was the cause of the accident, one of the survivors told police.
Northern
Railway chief public relations officer Neeraj Sharma told reporters in
New Delhi that the train was booked by a group of foreigners mainly from
Britain.
The police said the train with four engines left Kalka
in Haryana at 12.40 p.m. It went off the tracks at Taksal, just three
kilometres from Kalka.
The traffic on the 96 km long and a
century-old narrow gauge world heritage railroad remained suspended and
is likely to be restored by Sunday.
The chartered trains on this
rail section are handled by the Indian Railways Catering and Tourism
Corporation, a wing of Indian Railways.
"The reason behind the
incident is yet to be ascertained. It might be a problem in the track or
in the coach. There is a possibility that an animal suddenly came on
the track or rocks falling on the track," Sharma told IANS in New Delhi
earlier.
The Kalka-Shimla rail track was built by the British in
1903 to ferry Europeans to and from this hill town, the erstwhile summer
capital of British India. It was chosen by Unesco as a world heritage
site in 2008.
Raaja Bhasin, a Shimla-based historian, who was
also travelling in the train, told IANS that the group of foreigners was
from Britain.
"The accident occurred just 10 minutes after the departure of the train from the Kalka station," Bhasin told IANS.
The
Kalka-Shimla rail route also features in the Guinness Book of World
Records for offering the steepest rise in altitude in a space of 96 km.
More than two-thirds of the track is curved, sometimes at angles as
sharp as 48 degrees.
The glorious journey along the rail line
from 640 metres above sea level at Kalka to the lofty heights of Shimla
at 2,060 metres takes one's breath away, as the train meanders through
deep ravines, a verdant forest of pine, deodar, oak and maple, and the
magnificent scenery of the Shivalik hills.
Five trains run
normally between Kalka and Shimla every day. Each 'toy train' -- the
popular name for it -- has about seven coaches and can accommodate
nearly 200 passengers.
The last derailment on the Kalka-Shimla
rail route occurred in December 2008 when one person was killed and
three people injured. It went off the track at Sanawar in Himachal
Pradesh after completing two hours of the journey.