Funicular service cuts travel time to Shri Malanggad shrine from hours to minutes

With the new funicular railway line, the four-minute journey will be a seamless ride to the top. A funicular railway line is characterised by a carriage going up and down a slope with the help of cables, the two carriageways arranged on a pulley acting as a counterbalance to each other.

The round trip will cost Rs 150. Each train, with two bogeys, has a capacity to ferry 90 passengers at once. With an incline of 33 degrees, the train covers a height of 300-400 meters.

The railway line has been in the works since 2004, when it was first suggested by MLA Kishan Kathore. “The idea first struck me on a field visit to Switzerland for 54 MLAs in 2004, where we went on a funicular railway,” said Kathore.

“As a frequent visitor of the shrine, I was immediately taken in by the idea, as it seemed much better than a ropeway. Immediately, I asked for more information on the system and spent over three hours in a presentation, even paying Rs 57,000 then through a travellers check to get it back here.”

The construction began in 2012 on a build-operate-transfer basis.

“Cutting through the rocks was a challenge,” said an official from the Public Works Department (PWD), which executed the project.
“The piers for the tracks emerge in a valley and go 24 meters high, likely the highest in the country for a funicular railway. The alignment of the tracks also go through a curve, which added to the challenges in construction.”

Explaining the functioning of the railway, the official said, “A funicular railway works like a pulley, with a motor on either ends controlling the train’s position so that their distances balance out each other. Each train acts like a counterweight for the other.”

Even after completion last year, safety clearances took a while to allow the line to start operations. The railways has five layers of safety failsafes, ensuring the automatic breaks step in if the manual driver led breaks do not kick in when needed, said the PWD official.

On Sunday, MLA Kathore inaugurated it along with MLA of Kalyan East, Sulabha Gaikwad.

Starting with a cost of Rs 45 crore in 2007 when the project took off, the cost of the railway over the years reached Rs 150 crore.
Located 3,000 feet above sea level, the shrine is the subject of a controversy, with a dargah on one end and a temple at the other. The Haji Malang Dargah, which is located on a hill south of Kalyan, is named after sufi saint Haji Abd-ul-Rahman, popularly known as Haji Malang Baba.

In the 1980s, Anand Dighe claimed the shrine was the location of an old Hindu shrine belonging to Nath Panth, on order of yogis, an issue that was raked up by Deputy CM Eknath Shinde in 2024.