UNESCO to fund restoration of toy train in Darjeeling

Kolkata: The 132-year-old Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR), which has been running a shortened service since 2010 due to landslides and earthquakes that has uprooted its tracks at various places, is now being restored by UNESCO.

The 88-kilometre railway system, commonly known as the “Toy Train”, is on the brink of getting an “endangered” status and even being de-listed from the list of World Heritage Sites. The UN body is appalled that three years have passed and till now neither the Indian Railways, nor West Bengal government has taken up the job of repairing first mountain railway in India and only the second in the world to have received the heritage status.

In a letter to Railway Board Chairman Arunendra Kumar this week, Shigeru Aoyagi, Director and UNESCO representative for India, Maldives and Sri Lanka, said that the railways needed to do much more than what it has done to protect the heritage site. “In view of the serious concerns raised by the international community regarding the condition of the DHR, it is important that your ministry demonstrate its active commitment to the protection of DHR so as to maintain its status within the World Heritage List,” the letter said.

Now, the body has taken on the responsibility to fund the repair of the track at a cost of $665,154 (Dh2.444 million), and will sign an agreement with the Indian Railways in September, where railways will be the nodal body for implementation and UNESCO will provide the technology. It has given the railways a strict time frame of 24-months to implement the same and wants the full track to be functional starting from Siliguri to Darjeeling.

Presently, DHR runs four trains between Dajeeling and Ghum and two between Karseong and Darjeeling and one as junge safari connecting Siliguri to Rontong.

According to the Adhir Chowdhury Minister of State-Railway, “we also want to restore this line. The central government had allocated funds, but state Public Works Department and National Road Transport Ministry has been squabbling and could not do the job. A coordination committee will be formed between UNESCO, railways, Road Transport Ministry, Bengal government and Gorkhaland Territorial Administration so that there are no further delays and problems during restoration work,” informed Chowdhury.

Trespassing on rail tracks claims 39 lives every day

NEW DELHI: Thirty-nine people are killed everyday on rail tracks while trespassing and the casualty in in such accidents between 2009-2012 was over 50,000.
These figures, which hold relevance in the wake of the Bihar train tragedy in which 28 pilgrims were mowed down by a train, show Indian Railways in a poor light when compared with modern railways in Japan and western countries
While Japan has reported no death on rail tracks in the last 50 years, the number of fatalities due to trespassing is far less in US and Europe as compared to in India.
According to Railway Ministry data, 50,298 people were killed from January 2009 to June 2012 which means on an average there are 14,370 trespassing deaths per year and 39 deaths every day.
While 14,376 people were killed on railway tracks and level crossings in 2009 due to trespassing, the number of deaths rose to 12,894 in 2010, according to the data.
The trespassing casualty rose further to 14,611 in 2011 and was recorded at 8,412 till June 2012.
On the other hand, in the UK there were only 36 and 16 deaths due to trespassing in 2009 and 2010 respectively while 852 such deaths had taken place in entire Europe in 2009 and 750 in 2010.
A total of 695 people were killed in train accidents in the US from 2000 to March 2012, while in Japan no such deaths have been reported in the last 50 years.
Railway Minister Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said, "We cannot compare ourselves with Japan. It is a much more advanced country and we cannot compare ourselves with them."
When asked whether Japanese system can be replicated here, he said, "India is a country of more than 1.2 billion population. It is next to impossible to imagine it."
Former Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi, however, differs with Chowdhury. "We are not serious about safety. One has to be serious about what to do. Our Metro system is running well without any accident. If you have a system then everything can be arranged. In Japan they have done it with the system and as a result there are no death on tracks."
Trivedi in his Rail Budget 2012-13 also mentioned that safety on Indian Railways has to be benchmarked against other modern railway systems in the world be it in Europe or Japan.
"Safety standards have been remarkable in these systems with no deaths due to rail accidents for decades together on high speed routes," he said.