‘Heritage’ fears on hold as toy train resumes run
Full Service To Be Restored Soon, Promises Adhir
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Junior railways minister Adhir Chowdhury on Saturday flagged off the resumption of the toy train service between Rung Tong to Gaya Bari via Tindharia.
The move will go a long way to neutralize the possibility of the country oldest mountain railway system losing the world heritage tag.
Chowdhury also promised to run the 87km full service from Siliguri to Darjeeling by restoring the rest of “damaged or nonexistent tracks”.
Earlier, Unesco had expressed concerns regarding the status of the DHR, affected by several landslides. Chowdhury said that if the railway tracks were not repaired, the DHR could be declared “endangered” by the Unesco, which would be quite humiliating.
DHR was almost declared “endangered” and ran the risk of being delisted from the list of World Heritage Sites recently because the railways had failed to send any official to a crucial meeting held at the Unesco World Heritage Centre in Paris, where it was supposed to argue its case against such a move.
The Kurseong-Siliguri section of the DHR has been non-operational since June 2010 after a landslide damaged a 500m stretch of the NH 55 at 14th Mile near Paglajhora. The DHR tracks running parallel to the highway were also swept away in the slide. Another landslide at Tindharia, 5km from Paglajhora along the highway, damaged the tracks in September 2011 and has put at risk the 100-year-old Tindharia Locomotive Works — the hill railway’s workshop.