Steam engines went out of use 20 years ago. But now Northern Railway is trying to revive them for heritage tourism. Aabhas Sharma visits the Rewari Locomotive Shed where steam engines are being restored and describes the labour of love that is putting them back on track.
The Locomotive Shed at Rewari, 80-km south-west of Delhi, is located at the far end of the railway platform. Nearby is an overhead water tank and the shed is painted red. Inside, there are two huge steam engines, WP7200 and WP7161, as well as two heritage coaches. A staff of about 30 is at work on the engines to make them travel worthy. Last Saturday, the engines did their maiden run from Delhi Cantonment to Alwar in Rajasthan, via Rewari. This was the first of a bi-monthly heritage train transporting tourists from Delhi to the Sariska wildlife sanctuary close to Alwar. The Northern Railway is also working on a two-night, three-day package for Rs 10,200, which will include the train journey.
Steam engines started to go out of use some 20 years ago. Until 1990, there were 2,300 steam engines in the country — all made by the state-owned Chittaranjan Locomotive Works at Bardhaman, West Bengal. The factory started production on January 26, 1950, the day India became a republic, and had manufactured 2,351 steam engines till 1972. Ten years later, there were only 75 left. The others had been dismantled and probably sold as scrap.
Today, there are only 30 left. Some are in service on narrow gauge lines in Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Nine are at the Rewari shed, and five have been refurbished and reused. The rest all are in a shocking state of neglect, covered in rust, parts falling off and await restoration.
In fact, there was no hope left for the shed too. The roof leaked, and weeds had grown all over the place. The engines, of course, were forgotten. They were fired only when some Bollywood producer wanted to make a period film. Movies like Gandhi, My Father and Devdas. The Legend of Bhagat Singh used an engine called Akbar (it had been lying abandoned in a shed in Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh.). Some of these movies were shot at Rewari, while for others like Devdas, the engine had to be transported out. “The cost is borne by the producers, and we send our drivers and mechanics,” says Vikas Arya, senior divisional mechanical engineer (power) of Northern Railway.
About a year ago, it was decided to revive steam engines for heritage trains and the shed at Rewari was identified as the place where these engines would be repaired. It seems the engines rotting in the shed did not inspire any confidence in Arya. Two engines were located, WP7200 and WP7161, which could be fixed easily.
The problem was that one was in Kolkata and the other in Siliguri (also in West Bengal). Arya decided to get these two engines to Delhi and subsequently shift them to Rewari. At a top speed of 30 km per hour, the distance of 1,490 km was covered in almost two months. The engines broke down on the way, and there were only a handful of people who could get them running again. It was a test of patience for Arya and his team but they were determined to give it their best shot. Meanwhile, the shed at Rewari was given a facelift with elevated platforms, a small garden and a cafeteria (which remains shut mostly).
Northern Railway decided to convert the shed into a heritage museum. The office of the loco foreman has an antique telephone, radio, typewriter and gramophone. The model room at the shed has pieces of antique furniture, crockery, benches, clocks, hand-signal lamps, signals, old photographs, miniature models, blueprints, books and anything related to steam engines that adds value to it.
Today, there are only a handful of visitors. But on weekends, a decent crowd turns up, sometimes two buses full of foreign tourists; school children from nearby cities too visit the shed. Every Sunday, the staff works diligently to light up the engines for the tourists who come. It takes almost four hours to fire a metre-gauge engine and six hours for a broad-gauge engine.
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The time taken to refit a steam engine depends on the state of disrepair it is in. For instance, one engine in complete ruins at the Rewari shed, according to the restoration team, will take at least six months to restore. Depending on the condition, the cost varies from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 15 lakh. Arya, 42, is passionate about the restoration and travels to Rewari thrice a week from his office in Delhi (in a train, of course) to supervise the work.
The biggest challenge was to source spares for the engines. Chittaranjan Locomotive Works stopped making steam engines almost 40 years ago. (India was perhaps the last country in the world to make steam engines.) The tools and casts were abandoned long ago. These have perhaps been melted since then and are in use elsewhere in a new avatar.
“There were no furnaces, expanders and cutters; everything had to be procured, borrowed or taken on loan,” recalls Arya. Spares were ordered from large sheds in Mumbai and Kolkata; the other divisions of the Railways pitched in as well. Some spares were found at Chittaranjan Locomotive Works. Pointing to an engine on which repair work is about to begin, the chief mechanic shows the space where huge pipes need to be fitted. “There are still no cranes and we have to fit them manually. I am about to retire in six years. Is this the age to do this kind of work? But I have to as not enough support staff and machinery are available,” he rues.
The other problem was manpower. Most steam-engine drivers and mechanics retired long ago. (In the glory days, the profession was dominated by men from the Anglo-Indian community. They also gave the Railways a formidable boxing team.) Some who might have worked on steam engines in their younger days have been coopted into Arya’s team.
Of the 30 men, at least a dozen will retire in the next five years. While they’re delighted to see steam engines back on track, they remain skeptical about the future. “We’ve given our blood and sweat to get these engines running but we aren’t sure what the future holds for them,” says a mechanic at the shed. The men request not to be named because they aren’t authorised to talk to the media, something which has landed them in trouble in the past. Arya says the men have learnt on the job and are doing well. When an engine fails — which it does regularly — at least a dozen people are sent to get it back. “To see an engine fire up after working months on it is extremely fulfilling,” says Arya.
The Railways were, at one time, among the largest buyers of coal in the country. This had spawned a whole business on the sly: engines “dropped” coal at designated places which was picked up and then sold in the market. But for Arya and his men it is quite an effort to procure coal. It is a long-drawn affair, one of the staff informs. The Railways get coal weighing about 100 tonne at one go, and it takes about six months from the time the application is made to reach the shed. To fire a broad-gauge steam engine requires about 2.5 tonne of coal —each tonne costs Rs 11,500.
Inside one of the engines, the chief mechanic shows how a steam engine gets running. There are two basic areas of activity here: the boiler where steam is created and the engine (with cylinders, rods and wheels) where the steam is used. The driver’s job is to feed coal into the boiler with a shovel. This explains why the steam engine went out of fashion.
There are no plans, however, to control the soot emitted by the engine. Most industrial chimneys now use filters to control emissions. The Railways haven’t given it a thought. This makes a shower an absolute necessary once the journey ends — some things never change.
Arya’s men, in spite of all the effort, are aware of the enormity of their task. With the old guard almost on their way out, it will be difficult to find men to keep these engines running in the days to come. “We’ve learnt the hard way and were determined to see them back on track. But the Railways might find it difficult to find new people to maintain them,” says an elderly member who has worked on these engines for almost nine years. Does he see them running on track in the future? “If you call one day’s travel a ‘run’, then yes maybe. But will they be back for good? I don’t think so,” says he.
There may be a point here. These trains cannot carry more than 75 people. The first-run on January 15, from Delhi to Alwar, had 46 people on board, most of them foreigners. But Arya remains hopeful of the future. “We are negotiating with foreign (tour) operators, and hopefully steam engines will see a revival.”
