Kalka–Shimla Railway
- UNESCO World Heritage
Interesting facts
- Construction started on an even narrower two-foot track, but in 1901 the contract was revised and the line was rebuilt to a gauge of two feet six inches.
- Local tradition also credits Bhalku, a villager with no formal training, with guiding the engineers along much of the route through the hills.
- Estimated at about 8.7 million rupees, the line cost more than 16 million by 1904, and the government paid over 17 million to buy it in 1906.
- The line crosses close to a thousand bridges and viaducts, most of them built of stone arches.
- The ruling gradient is 1 in 33, steep enough that the line had once been considered for a rack railway.
- Articulated Kitson-Meyer steam locomotives were brought in from 1928 to haul heavier trains up the gradients.
- One of the services, the Rail Motor, is a small first-class railcar with a glass roof for views of the mountains overhead.
Why it is worth it
The Kalka–Shimla Railway climbs from the plains of northern India to Shimla, the summer capital of British India, on a narrow track just 762 millimetres wide. In 96 km it rises from 656 metres at Kalka to 2,075 metres at Shimla, winding through the foothills of the Himalayas along a route with over 900 curves, more than 100 tunnels and hundreds of bridges. The trains are slow — an average of 25–30 km/h on a ruling gradient of about 3 per cent — and that is part of the pleasure: hills, villages and deep valleys pass at an unhurried speed.
The line was built because twice a year the entire government had to move between Calcutta and Shimla by horse and ox-drawn carts. Once the broad-gauge line from Delhi reached Kalka in 1891, a hill railway became possible. After years of surveys and a debate between rack and adhesion, the privately funded Delhi–Ambala–Kalka Railway Company began work in 1898 under the chief engineer Herbert Septimus Harington, and the line opened on 9 November 1903. Costs had doubled, the company never saw a profit, and the government bought the railway in 1906.
The engineering is the attraction. The longest tunnel, at Barog, runs for about 1,144 metres just before Barog station, and the most striking bridge, No. 226, crosses a deep valley on five tiers of stone arches, each level built in turn. The route passes Dharampur, Solan and Kandaghat before reaching Summerhill and Shimla. Steam engines built in Britain worked the line for decades; diesel locomotives arrived in 1955, and today both trains and railcars run with panoramic coaches. In 2008 the railway was added to the Mountain Railways of India World Heritage Site.
Getting there
The line starts at Kalka station, the northern terminus of the broad-gauge line from Delhi, and ends at Shimla station. Shaheed Bhagat Singh International Airport (IXC) at Chandigarh is about 60 km from Shimla in a straight line. Check the timetable before travelling.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Kalka–Shimla Railway is a 2 ft 6 in narrow-gauge railway in North India which traverses a mostly mountainous route from Kalka to Shimla. It is known for its scenic views of the surrounding hills and villages. The railway was built under the direction of Herbert Septimus Harington between 1898 and 1903 to connect Shimla, the summer capital of India during the British Raj, with the rest of the Indian rail system.
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