The steady inflow of summer tourists to Darjeeling hills has made the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) introduce two more joy ride services of toy trains from Saturday.
In the hills, joy rides between Darjeeling and Ghum railway stations are the most popular toy train service of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR), a century-old mountain railway and a world heritage site recognised by Unesco.
“We have introduced two special joy rides to be hauled by diesel locos, from today (Saturday). As of now, it has been decided to continue these two joy ride services till June 30,” said Sabyasachi De, the chief public relations officer of the NFR.
Usually, eight joy rides run every day between Darjeeling and Ghum, which are 14km apart.
According to him, a special joy ride train will leave Darjeeling at 11.25am and reach Ghum at 12.10pm. On return, it will depart Ghum at 12.30pm to reach Darjeeling by 1pm.
The second service will depart from Darjeeling at 1.25pm to reach Ghum 2.10pm. It will again leave Ghum at 2.35pm to arrive Darjeeling at 3.05pm.
In each of these rides, there will be three-first class chair car coaches. “In all, 89 passengers can travel in each of these trains,” said a source.
