Halt stations are exceptionally small stations with no loop lines, no foot over bridge and no amenties at the station. Only 3 pair of trains stop at this halt per day. The platform is low lying and there is no railway staff present. Even the stopping trains only have less than a minute halt here.
Nagpur, has a diamond crossing, one of only 2 remaining in India. It used to, IIRC, the center point of undivided India in British times [of course, it is no longer that]. However, the following images, clicked by a friend of mine, showcase instead the museum located there. It isn't as big as Delhi's version.
An empty platform before the arrival of the train; a mixed composition coach of AC 1st and 2nd class and some people crossing the tracks instead of taking the FOB in the background.
Couple of weeks ago, on a weekend, I decided to take my bike and make a giant ~100+ km loop. I had done it once before covering multiple stations [I think total 7 stations fall atleast in that process] and decided to it again. This time I only stopped at 3 stations en route because of paucity of time. The rural roads have improved quite a lot in India, though patchy stretches remain. Lots of cars also abound which increases traffic density. Still, as long as it's not an expressway or middle of a dense city, I am comfortable. I lost nearly ~15 mins in a traffic snarl at a railway crossing next to this station. It's a small station mainly used for freight loading/unloading though passenger trains do stop here. It lies on a branch route so traffic is relatively lower.
Exceptionally old fan at a rural station and front end/inside view of stations. The final image is from 2016 from Calcutta's Rail Museum. These images are low quality and I am not sure if I have uploaded them here [I hadn't even properly backed them; had uploaded them to another Railfanning forum back in the day from where I retrieved it]. I have a few more and will upload soon.
I searched but couldn't find any instance of me posting these images [the proper search button doesn't work for me for some reason on the site]. So here are two more images from the Calcutta rail museum and one image from Howrah station. It's a road/bypass cutting between two platforms at the rail station.
I had visited National Rail Museum earlier this year and uploaded the relevant images here. I found a 1978 image of the museum on Google's Arts and Culture portal. Second image is of Patiala State Monorail, undated. It's super low res, but images of this Indian monorail aren't much.
That monorail is so cool! It's preserved and still runs (there are a few YouTube videos about it). Here's a link to a site about the Patiala State Monorail.
It runs within the confines of the museum, right? I don't think it runs on it's original route anymore. There is/was a horse drawn monorail in Pakistan that was rejuvenated and saw service [like actually transporting people] as recent as 2010 before being shutdown again. I think the only other monorail in India is the modern built system in Mumbai. But that suffers from low speeds and lesser carrying capacity compared to a traditional metro train, so was just relegated on one route.
Very interresting pictures. BTW I remember a french railroad magazine that released a special issue in 1976, about then all remaining steam operated railroads. And I remember a 2 1/2 foot gauge railroad in India that operated 4-6-2 Pacific locos. Have you an idea of what it may have been, and if this railroad is still operated right now ? And other question, are there still steam locos operated in commercial service in India ? Dom
Such Narrow Gauge routes are still present in some places, Shimla - Kalka Railway in North and Darjeeling Hill Railway in east. The latter still sees sporadic steam services. The loco used is/was a British one.Other Narrow Gauge routes have transitioned to diesel. There is a Meter Gauge railway in South called Nilgiri Mountain Railway. It uses Swiss made compound steam locos .https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nilgiri_Mountain_Railway_X_class A friend of mine had visited the latter Railway couple of years before. Lemme see if I can fish out the images, I will upload them.
The unique horsetram way in Pakistan I mentioned few messages before. It ran for a short while in ~2010 before being shut down again. More images here https://www.irfca.org/gallery/Foreign/HorseTramPakistan/
