#HistoricalRail
Recently I have gone through a very good document on some of our country’s small railways. Some of them are extinct, some are still operational, some have been converted. Thought it’s my duty to share the knowledge among my fellow Railfans. It’s not possible to discuss the whole book at a time. So I’ll explore it part by part.
Today I will inform you about a historical railway which is even about to be wiped out from people’s memory. This railway used to operate at North Bengal. The “Teesta Valley Railway”...
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or “Teesta Valley Extension”. It’s called ‘Extension’ as it was operated as a branch line of the famous “Darjeeling Himalayan Railway” with an aim to connect Kalimpong with the plains. However, due to technical difficulty it couldn’t be extended beyond Teesta Bazaar. This branch was opened in 1915 and terminated in 1951, with only 36yrs. Of lifespan.
The track started from today’s ‘Siliguri Town’ station. All the stations enroute are:
1) Siliguri Town (Source)
2) Siliguri Road Jn. (Now ‘SGUJ’)
3) Sivok Forrest Sidings
4) Sivok
5) 13.5 Miles
6) Kalijhora
7) Rilly Sidings
8) Ryiang (Station for Mangpu Hills)
9) Giellekhola/Kalimpang Road (Station Code: GEKA)
This ‘Giellekhola’ used to exist around 3KMs away from today’s Teesta Bazaar. Total distance of the route was closed to 50KMs. As per my understanding the route could have been looked like the one shown in the Red Line with stations as blue dots in the attached map (drawn by myself- may not be 100% accurate but more or less).
It was light gauge (2Ft.) like the Darjeeling Railway.
Will come back with more histories, descriptions and acknowledgements soon in the next part.