3 posts tagged “indian railways”
I was cleaning up photo folders and found this video that I had taken about 50km outside Bangalore. I was on an outbound train that got held up for a 'crossing' (i.e. on a single line, a train in one direction making way for another traveling in the opposite direction). The inbound train that passed is headed by a diesel loco of the "WDP4" class (W-broad guage, D- Diesel, P-Passenger service 4-Series). My friends on IRFCA, if they stumble upon this video, will have no trouble identifying the invound and outbound trains. If you want to try guessing, please go ahead and post your response.
I had promised to upload more metre gauge videos but I can't find them! But to compensate, here's a very interesting video - a pretty slick one shot by a German tourist / reporter. Some of the commentary is in German but it's not hard to get the drift. Most of the rest of it is in "Inglish" and there's a little bit of proper Queen's English in the end. So, in a sense, this video happily brings together my previous posts on Indian Rail and Indian English! Without further ado, here's the link.
While trying to get a bit organized, I found some Indian Railways videos that I had taken with my old camera - which I will now proceed to upload in installments
This first one is particularly dear to me. This one is to be listened to more than watched for the following reasons
a) This was at 5.00 am at a rural outpost (called Mailani in north India) in wet, foggy weather in Feb 2005. Even a better camera couldn't have caught a better visual.
b) This is a train on the metre gauge - that increasingly rare thing that is hurtling towards extinction. More specifically, it's a YDM (Y- Metre Gauge, D- Diesel, M - "Mixed" use) headed express train running from Mathura to Lucknow - both cities in Uttar Pradesh (Northern Province) in India.
c) The constant blaring of the hooter followed by the clackety-click of the rest of the train is music to my ears. It is 'clackety-click' on metre gauge instead of 'clickety-clack' on broad gauge as Paul Theroux - that great train traveller - reminds us.