The new generation has seen such machines in films like Kitaab where an engine driver sings Dhanno Ki Aankon Mein… or in Sholay when gangsters led by Gabbar Singh rob the train.
The steam locomotives disappeared from the country by the seventies and their place taken over by diesel and electric engines. But the new arrivals did not have the charm and grace of the so called ‘smoke-belching black stallions’.
But the world’s oldest working steam locomotive is alive and kicking in India. A steam locomotive manufactured in 1855 by UK-based Kitson, Thomson & Hewitson made a come back from its ‘old age home’ for a 13 km dream run from Egmore to Guindy in Chennai on Monday making August 15 yet another landmark day for India. It will find a place in the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest ever steam locomotive in active service.
It took engineers of Perambur Loco Works in Chennai suburbs almost six years to restore EIR-21 (East Indian Raillway-21), a coal-guzzling steam engine to its original form. “The engine had retired from Railways in 1910 after 55 years of glorious service.
She was resting in the Railway Museum at Jamalpur in Bihar.
Since no one in the country had thought of preserving heritages like steam locomotives, the engine remained uncared and unnoticed.
It was only after the restoration and re-run of EIR-22, an old and dilapidated loco engine, we came across the fact that another engine had been imported along with it. The search took us to the Railway Museum where we found EIR-21 in a pathetic situation. She had lost all her charms. The components were missing and was almost like a shell,” PR Satyapal, senior section engineer, told DNA.
The EIR-22, renamed Fairy Queen after a thorough overhaul in 2001, is still serving the Railways as a heritage train between Alwar in Rajasthan and New Delhi.
