Five services of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR) toy train will be cancelled, starting from next week, for a while as passengers are too few now, Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) officials said on Friday.
“It has been decided to cancel the tri-weekly AC train that runs between New Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling and two pairs of special joy rides between Darjeeling and Ghoom stations from next week because of insufficient patronage,” said a railway official.
The four special diesel loco joy rides will not be available from December 6 to December 31. The tri-weekly AC passenger train will not run from December 17 to February 28.
During the past few years, the footfall of passengers has increased in DHR. In the current fiscal too, the authorities are expecting a footfall of over one lakh passengers.
In recent years, the DHR has also taken up a number of initiatives to pomote the toy train services, a heritage mountain railway recognised by Unesco. They have introduced new services and convened events to increase the DHR’s earnings.
Sandipan Ghosh, the general secretary of Eastern Himalaya Travel & Tour Operators’ Association, said that flow of tourists is comparatively less now. It will increase at the year-end. The rush, like every year, will be again next summer.
“We hope the railways reintroduce these services when the flow of tourists goes up and the demand for toy train tickets likewise increases,” said Ghosh.
A local train travelling from Santragachi to Jhargram came to a halt after residents of HaurRadhamohanpur drew the driver’s attention to a crack on the track on Friday. According to the villagers, one of the residents spotted the crack (in picture) and waved a red shirt to draw the driver’s attention.
However, the Kharagpur divisional commercial manager refused to give any credit to the villagers.
He said railway workers who were on patrolling duty nearby alerted the driver and stopped the train.
It took around 45 minutes for train services to normalise after the crack was repaired.
The Telegraph
Picture by Saikat Santra
