New Delhi, July 8: The 105-year old Kalka-Shimla Railway (KSR), an engineering marvel regarded as an outstanding example of a hill passenger system, was accorded the status of a World Heritage Site by UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee (WHC) during its ongoing meeting at Quebec in Canada on July 7.

This 96.6-km long narrow gauge railway line now joins Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR) and Nilgiri Mountain Railway (NMR) under the “Mountain Railways of India” category in UNESCO’s world heritage list.

“The Kalka Shimla Railway represents an exceptional technical achievement in the development of the Himalayan mountains because of its length, its altitude and the difficulty of the terrain through which it runs in difficult tropical climatic conditions,” read the statement of Outstanding Universal Value adopted by the WHC. First submitted to the WHC on December 23, 2004 and having remained on its tentative list ever since, KSR’s chance of successfully securing a world-heritage tag had improved considerably following the inspection conducted by a joint UNESCO-ICOMOS mission led by Dr Robert Lee in September 2007. Lee, incidentally, had also inspected the DHR and had recommended its inscription as a World Heritage Site.

Opened to traffic in 1903, KSR is recognized for applying bold and ingenious engineering solutions, including extensive tunneling and setting up multi-arch gallery bridges, to accomplish the task of setting up effective rail link across a mountainous terrain of great beauty.

Having carefully built up KSR’s case over the past few months, Railway Ministry officials, led by executive director (heritage) Rajesh Agrawal, were quite optimistic about the property getting recognised as world heritage. Indian Railways had argued that the authenticity of KSR had been well preserved over the decades and it’s infrastructure, 18 railway stations, 988 bridges and 102 tunnels, had been well maintained to keep this hill railway operational more than a century later after it was first thrown open to traffic.

Recognising that the infrastructure and the operations on this line have been satisfactorily maintained since its inception, UNESCO has now said that the use of this line by local passengers, for goods movement and by tourists for more than a century is an important factor contributing to the line’s authenticity.

“The legal protection in place is adequate. The public management of the line and its many employees are a guarantee of the conservation of its integrity and authenticity over the coming years, enabling a lasting expression of its heritage values,” the WHC has said.

Meanwhile, UNESCO has now asked the Indian authorities to draw up of a detailed technical and architectural inventory of the stations and annex buildings located on the KSR, “indicating their state of conservation and the planned programme of works” to ensure respect for the property’s outstanding universal value. It has also recommended stepping up control of encroachment on land in the nominated property zone and in the buffer zones.

Tracking the line

• Railways Stations: 18 (only 16 are in use today)

• Track length: 96.6 kilometres

• Gauge: 762 mm Narrow Gauge

• Tunnels: 103 (only 102 exist today)

• Bridges: 988. Major bridges 61

• Curves: 917 (67.68 km, almost 70 per cent of the total track is curved)