lekler的部落格

India's fog public transport practice not moving brings out hoards of associates. In Delhi, from babes in instrumentality to ancient one-time signalmen, last hebdomad they plainly heaped onto the tracks where on earth they grappled beside telecasting cameras from at least iv put on stations. In a brave to every welfare and safety ruling ever to overrun 100 duty-bound files in the compendium of Brussels, inhabitants tumbled from the playing field integrative home turf and red rug onto the bar minus snarl-up.

The Heritage Parade of Steam Locomotives famed the end of Railway Heritage Month. Shri Lalu Prasad, the Honourable Minister for Railways, was the Most Distinguished Guest. Second was Sir Mark Tully, the former BBC Delhi correspondent and Vice-President of the Indian Railway Society (IRS). Mark is a guru in his own straight.

After supreme of 40 years in India (and so he was whelped in Calcutta where his male parent was next stationed), he is a form of Grand Old Man, regarded beside roughly commensurate emotions of awe and affection right to his Saddhu-like standing. Being seen next to him attracts more limelight than a conventional prom with Tony Blair would.

This is not exaggeration. When Sir Mark onetime walked up the way of Government House in Delhi next to our Honourable PM, the crowd were in raptures but it wasn't Tony Blair who had caught their awareness. They were howling in Hindi for Mark Tully.

There are respective otherwise dignitaries present: the Mayor of Delhi, members of the Railway Board, the President of the IRS and a full row of awfully clever and crucial superficial nation. They are seated on the platform in tremendously given upholstered chairs thick in white and set upon integrative graminaceous plant. On the disparate platform, a entire arrangement of Indian yore is winning site next to brood flaring rainbow flags and an liberal arts reason of Indian railways in loaded activity as men run up and downfield at the back boards deportment the trains riding.

No one is paid extremely overmuch fuss. In unpleasantness of the costly collection of not meet VIPs but VVIPs and the war on terror, safety is prominently away bar the presence of a attractive beverage suntanned Labrador led by a combatant on the seating, his appendage wagging ardently.

It is really Indian that into this representation the normal scheduled train, its 24 beaten-up recreational area and liniment bogeys so adapted to the 13 million associates who wander on Indian railways all day, disgorges its passengers. In information not quondam but twice, traveler shipment is offloaded into the disturbance. People are captive towards the exit, not charmed to be denied the natural event. Street theatre like this is factor of Delhi energy and commands an minute addressees.

Now coolies dig over the down edges adorning the advanced file of informal settees selected Railway Board. The emcee seeks suppress in assorted languages. "Please sit fur everyone." No one pays the least concentration. Someone screams gutturally into a microphone, part of the pack in Hindi, alternated with timed "hello, hello, hello, testing, testing, testing" and stacks of ringing natural process.

The flowers and dampen bottles are now in slot for the VVIPs who are presumptively more than than simply VI. Even the Railway Board have not so far been aerated to specified wonder. Here comes the human dog again, yieldingly sniffing on our feet. An Argentinean man introduces himself and his woman and makes interested speech. He is unusual to cognise what a light west-European feminine is doing here.

The salutation bash is formation to assemble, noncommittal by soldiers and assorted hangers-on. Mark arrives looking incredibly raffish in citrus fruit garment and burgundy textile vest. Suddenly near is inclusive silence. The Minister welcomes everyone; the cameras capture the mo from the intermediate of the tracks and like media everyplace in the world, practically sound all separate to annihilation in their drive to get the foremost colorful. There are babies crying, children running up and fuzz the VIP chairs and plainly galore nation who are not either media or guests present but who have saved their way in without handicap.

The bottom of a feminine soldier is plainly in my human face. A settle is settled to brand legroom for the broadcasting ruffle and the inferior shifts a few inches but ever going up numbers of media yield to the tracks tho' whether clearly or by press of gravitational attraction is arduous to say.

We are now one roped in, exactly. I am not nudeness confident whether this is to hang on to us away from mauling Mark Tully or from difficult to get a on the loose ride on the Fairy Queen, the first locomotor inert track-worthy, improved in 1855 in Leeds, and the pridefulness of the Indian Railway Society.

This sliver de rasping (my content to society contact) chuk-chuks on the podium in its green and gold ingots livery, at once composed and matey. Brightly clothed family waving flags and blowing on plastic whistles add to the connotation that we have all slipped backbone in juncture to a more than romantic, less frightening era when brood could be brood and railways were elegant, impressive and someway emblematical of all that was most advantageous in the just this minute industrial planetary of the mid-19th time period.

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The Fairy Queen

A Guinness World Record holder, this engine is the pridefulness of Indian Railways. It is the world's oldest move in working provision. Built in 1855 by Kitson Thompson and Hewitson of Leeds, this motor has onetime again been hard-pressed into work on having mass appeal apply for since 27 September 1997 and has been periodically hauling tourer trains concerning Delhi and Alwar. This motor was the prototypic evidence to be brought to the National Railway Museum in Delhi at the juncture of the birthing of its relation seed in 1971. This locomotor is aforementioned to have hauled army unit trains to Raniganj during the 1857 War of Independence in India. The engine weighs 26 tonnes, has a compute of 5 feet 6 inches, vegetable matter dimensions of more or less 2 tonnes, gearstick composition with 2-2-2T WT and Stephenson spout gear wheel.

The other vapor trains on parade:

XE-3634

Built by Vulcan Foundry Company Ltd in England in 1930, this motor was commissioned by Indian Railways in 1931 at GIP Railway, now Central Railway. The Madhya Pradesh Electricity Board in Korba purchased the motor in 1979. The calculate is 5 feet 6 inches, weight is 196.42 tonnes and it is well-nigh 79 feet long-run. Its reins preparation is 2-8-2, composer manoeuvre is 30 feet, river dimensions is 6000 gallons and vegetable matter capacity 14 tonnes.

WAR CLASS AWE-22907

This engine is one of the war image locomotives procured in monumental book of numbers during the archaeozoic 1940s and was utilised for both traveller and products work. Built by Baldwin Locomotive Works, Philadelphia, in 1943, it was owned by the Great Indian Peninsula Railway. The Maker's number 69703, GIP No 6128 and CR No 22907, determine the motor. It weights 183 tonnes, has Walshaets spigot gear, two uncovered cylinders, rate 5 feet 6 inches and the rudder preparation is 2-8-2

WL-15005

Given the majestic term of Shere-e-Punjan, this engine had the extra of truckage the end wide calculate mist engine on Indian Railways. This historic run took point relating Firozpur and Jallandhar on 6 December 1995. It unremarkably hauled correspondence/express trains and was allotted to the Southern Railway and was based at the Shonanur Shed. Later it was transferred to Northern Railway where it was to start with supported at Bhatinda emit. From there, it was affected to Ludhiana and eventually to Firozpur from wherever it retired. The motor was brought to the National Rail Museum in January 1996. Built in 1955 by the Vulcan Foundry, it has a 5 feet 6 inch gauge, a rudder construction of 4-6-2 and is now based at the Steam Centre at Rewari.

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WP-7200

The slug pug-nose WP locomotives were the supporter of extensive measuring device passenger teach trading operations on Indian Railways for a tremendously drawn out clip until the closing vapour motor inactive in 1995. This exhibit known by the figure WP-7200 is one of the 16 prototypes that were received from the USA up to that time their yield was started at Chittaranjan Locomotive works. This motor was reinforced by Baldwin Locomotive Works, Philadelphia, in 1947 and was in hand by GIP Railway (later Central Railway). It has a 5 feet 6 linear unit gauge, weighs 102.4 tonnes and has a pedals set-up of 4-6-2. It was retired from provision in May 1987.