Ooty146;s old wheezer

AS it begins its slow climb up the hill its wheezing whistle sounds near exhaustion. But even after all these years it still has the novelty to startle an errant cow on the tracks or send the neighbouring hens scuttling back home to roost. With its columns of smoke, the 250 bridges it goes over and 16 tunnels it boldly breathes in and out of, the Nilgiri Passenger has been part of the landscape ever since it began its journey in 1899. It has lit up the screen in David Lean8217;s A Passage to India and more recently its rhythm blended with the steps of Shah Rukh Khan and Malaika Arora in Dil Se8217;s chartbuster chaiyya chaiyya.

The quaint train and the landscape complement each other. As do the well-kept stations where the train halts sometimes for passengers, sometimes for its thirsty engine that8217;s at the rear end pushing the train up to have its fill of water. Hillgrove, Lovedale, Wellington, Runneymede. Names the British gave the scenic stops in memory of their homes. At the Hillgrove station, built in 1900, C Thangavel, the 28-year-old station master displays two old record books, freshly bound and new pages added to its fraying faded pages. When did you join service, someone asks. 8216;8216;In 1903,8217;8217; he says, grinning before correcting himself, 8216;8216;Sorry, 2003.8217;8217; Surrounded by so much history it8217;s easy to lapse into the past.

Water break over, the train pulls out once again, leaving behind waves of smoke that linger long after the train has left, rising almost mysteriously from the still forest.

A century after it first made an appearance, starting from Mettupalayam to Coonoor8212;it was extended to Ooty or Udagamandalam, as it8217;s now called, in 19088212;the Nilgiri Mountain Railway8217;s long stay has finally been acknowledged. The UNESCO inscribed the NMR on the World Heritage List in the 29th session of the World Heritage Committee meeting held in South Africa in July 2005. Together with the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway that was given this status in 1999, it has been branded 8216;Mountain Railways of India.8217;

Acknowledging their contribution, it says: 8216;8216;Still operational today, these hill passenger railways crossing regions of great beauty are outstanding examples of bold, ingenious engineering solutions for the problem of establishing an effective rail link through a rugged, mountainous terrain8230; It was highly significant in facilitating population movement and the social-economic development in the British colonial era.8217;8217;

Rajesh Agrawal, executive director Heritage, Ministry of Railways, says 8216;8216;The Nilgiri Mountain Railway inspires a lot of adjectives.8217;8217; But, he notes, the railway8217;s job was to look beyond the adjectives and drum up a list of qualities that would merit this status.

ADJECTIVES and labels it has collected many. Toy train is one of them. 8216;8216;I don8217;t know why people call it a toy train,8217;8217; says travel writer and railway enthusiast Bill Aitken who has to his credit Exploring Indian Railways and Travels by a Lesser Line. 8216;8216;The Darjeeling train is 2 ft but Ooty is metre gauge 3 ft 3 inches and its engine has twice the power of the Darjeeling train,8217;8217; he explains.

Aitken8217;s been on the train several times, the last three years ago, but finds little has changed over the years. 8216;8216;The forests are well-preserved, the old stations are lovely. And at the Ooty station the ladies still come with buckets to get garam paani from the engine,8217;8217; he says.

The NMR is also India8217;s only railway that uses the rack and pinion system, though only for a part of the journey. The rack is basically a third notched line between the existing two.

The UNESCO citation is also based on a cultural criterion. Prabhu Poornan, a member of 8216;Save Nilgiris Campaign8217; in Ooty, accompanied representatives of the UNESCO team when they visited the Nilgiris to hold discussions with the locals, the stakeholders. 8216;8216;Unlike other parts of the country, the Toda tribals of Nilgiri never saw the train as an alien monster. They even have a song celebrating it, comparing it with their most prized possession, the buffalo,8217;8217; says Poornan.

NOW that the NMR has got this distinction, where does it go from here? 8216;8216;Once you have got a doctorate it8217;s you to you if you want to sit at home or do something. Getting the status means a huge responsibility,8217;8217; says Agrawal.

It has also ensured that the loss-making line8212;it runs up a loss of about Rs 6 to Rs 8 crore annually8212;will continue to run. It has also been given Rs 2 crore to maintain its stations and another proposal to give it Rs 20 crore to buy new coaches and engines is under consideration.

It also means greater world attention. Says Aitken: 8216;8216;Preservation is a big market abroad. There are people there who have the leisure and money to travel.8217;8217; How the government cashes in on it remains to be seen.

UNESCO has also recommended an independent management unit for the NMR. Says Agrawal, 8216;8216;The Nilgiri Mountain Railway can8217;t be run as a modern railway. It has to be run in its old special way, perhaps even as a heritage unit.8217;8217;