The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR) will get three new diesel engines soon.

The Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) will manufacture the locos at its workshops in New Bongaigaon, Assam, and Tindharia in the hills, DHR director Priyanshu said.

The new engines, he said, will be commissioned within six to eight months.

“The new engines will be manufactured at the NFR’s workshops in New Bongaigaon and Tindharia. It will take at least six months to complete the manufacturing and by the middle of next year, we will be able to make the new engines operational,” the director told The Telegraph on Monday.

Sources in the DHR, which is a Unesco-recognised world heritage site, said the proposal for making at least three new diesel locos had been sent to the railway board early this year.

“The board has approved the project. The NFR will spend Rs 6 crore to manufacture each loco,” said a source.

As of now, six diesel engines are operational in the DHR. These NDM6 locos were built by San Engineering, which is a Bangalore-based company, and were introduced in the DHR in 2000.

“Once these new locos begin to operate, we will increase the number of services to accommodate more toy train enthusiasts and tourists visiting the Darjeeling hills every year,” DHR official said.

The Himalayan train is one of the major tourist attractions in the hills. In the 2022-2023 fiscal, the toy train service had earned around Rs 19 crore. In the current fiscal, the revenue is likely to increase as the hill railway earned Rs 14 crore till October.

As a part of the promotional activities of the century-old mountain railway, the DHR is currently hosting the third edition of the Ghum Winter Festival.

The 15-day-long festival was inaugurated at Ghum, located around 12km from Darjeeling, on November 25.

“We are planning to organise the closing ceremony of the fest at Chowrasta (Darjeeling Mall) on December 10 to ensure massive participation of tourists and local people. Apart from that, a special joy ride on toy trains for children has been arranged on December 5 to mark the day when Unesco conferred world heritage status on the DHR in 1999,” a source said.