Nilgiri Mountain Railway, Tamil Nadu

The sleepy little station of Mettupalayam at the foot of Nilgiris (Blue mountain), part of the majestic Western Ghats, about 35 km from Coimbatore in the state of Tamil Nadu in South India, springs to life shortly before sunrise as preparations begin for the departure of what is among the four mountain trains being operated inIndia; the others are the Matheran train from Neral in Maharashtra, the one from Kalka in Haryana to Shimla in Himachal Pradhesh and the one from New Jalpaiguri to Darjeeling in West Bengal. Each of them leaves from the plains to the hills and have become popular, ferrying passengers from the hot plains to the relatively cool climes of the hills in summer.

Commissioned by the British in the early 1900s, the Nilgiri Mountain Railway, NMR in short, has completed a century of service and is a UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITE. Half a dozen compartments are hurled up the ghats by a steam locomotive manufactured in Switzerland. Due to the steep gradient, the NMR uses a unique rack and pinion system on the metre guage track to ensure that the train does not slide down or get off the tracks at the sharp curves. The rack and pinion system consits essentially of a wheel at the base of the compartment that runs on two rows of elevated metal strips with teeth fixed between the tracks. While ensuring grip, the friction brings down the speed of the train considerably and the distance of a little less than 50 km from Mettupalayam to Ooty is covered in 4-5 hours. The stretch from Coonoor, the biggest station on the route, to Ooty is less steep and a diesel engine replaces the steam engine. The mechanical signalling system on the route is a bit different from what one gets to see elsewhere in that, when the flag is horizontal, the train stops and when it is lowered, the train moves ahead.

Activities pick up gradually on the platform of Mettupalayam station as the grand old steam engine is taken out of the maintenance area and attached to the compartments on the platform, and the train departs around 7:30 am. As the toy train serves as a connection to Ooty for a train arriving at Mettupalayam from Chennai, those boarding at Mettupalayam ensure that they arrive well before the departure time as those alighting from the Chennai train fill up the toy train in a matter of seconds.

The average speed till Coonoor is about 10 km an hour. As the train gets past a level crossing, paddy fields, coconut and arecanut plantations and wades into the thickly wooded hills of the Western Ghats (one of the biodiversity hotspots and home to several endageared flora and fauna), one is welcomed by gurgling mountain streams before they cascade, plunge headlong and disappear into the deep gorges surrounded by the stunning biodiversity of the Western Ghats. When the train gets into the tunnels, the sounds of the steam engine together with those emanating from the compartments accompanied by the cheers of the passengers echoing from the walls give the feeling of being in the middle of a well-calibrated orchestra. The smoke and coal dust often get blown into the compartments when the train passes through a tunnel as they bounce off the roof and walls of the tunnel. The engine is at the back on the way up and in front on the way down. In the flowering season, wild flowers capable of putting any garden to shame, grace the sides of the tracks. Of the stations on the route-- Kallar, Adderly, Hillgrove, Runneymede, Kateri Road, Coonoor, Wellington, Aruvankadu, Ketti, Lovedale and finally Ooty, some have shops which do brisk business making the most of the opportunity. In the course of a day, they get only two opportunities: one in the morning when the train climbs up and the other in the evening when it is on the way down to the plains. It is ensured at these stations that the steam engine has enough water filled up from overhead tanks. One gets to see the staff on the train and those at the stations interacting like a closely knit family as generally, these stations host a train only twice a day.

This journey up the ghats should perhaps not be taken up with a state of mind which, obsessed with speed, tends to look at various options of travel and invariably chooses the fastest mode; rather, with a state of mind that the journey is to be savored as much (if not more) as what lies in store at the so called destination; with a state of mind that as a leisure traveler, a major share of what one sets out for is accomplished on the way itself; when realization dawns that there are times when the destination is just a trigger to get one moving, so as to imbibe the experiences on the way. Here, perhaps, all one has to do is take the clock off the mind, unwind, and get into the flow of a rather different kind.




“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
Ernest Hemingway   ..