Nilgiri Mountain Railway
- UNESCO World Heritage
Interesting facts
- Plans for a railway up to the Nilgiri Hills were drawn up as early as 1854, yet some 45 years passed before trains finally reached Coonoor.
- It is the only rack railway anywhere in India.
- In 1907 the line took over four Double Fairlie locomotives built in 1879–80 for service in Afghanistan, which had sat unused in storage since 1887.
- On the rack section the steam locomotive is coupled at the downhill end, pushing the carriages up the mountain rather than pulling them.
- Although the rack section averages about 1 in 24.5, at Kallar the train leaves the station straight onto a gradient of 1 in 12.
- The newest of its X class rack locomotives was completed in August 2021 at the Golden Rock railway workshops in India.
- Leaving Mettupalayam, the line actually descends for a short distance and crosses the Bhavani River before it begins to climb.
- The 1908 extension from Coonoor to Ooty, a little under 19 km of track, cost about 2.44 million rupees.
- Ooty station keeps its original 1908 building and a weighing scale made in Birmingham in 1907.
- Locals have long called the line the "Toy Train".
Why it is worth it
The Nilgiri Mountain Railway climbs from the plains of Tamil Nadu into the Blue Mountains on a metre-gauge line 46 km long, and on its steepest stretch it needs a toothed rack to do it. Between Kallar and Coonoor the track uses the Abt rack-and-pinion system to tackle gradients as steep as 1 in 12 — the steepest railway in Asia. On the way it negotiates some 209 curves, 16 tunnels and around 250 bridges, and the train takes close to five hours to climb and three and a half to come down.
The line was a long time in the making. It reached Coonoor from Mettupalayam in June 1899 and was extended to Udhagamandalam, the old hill station of Ooty, on 15 October 1908. In 2005 UNESCO added it to the Mountain Railways of India World Heritage Site. The rack section is still worked by X class steam locomotives, a design built largely in Switzerland by the Swiss Locomotive and Machine Works.
The attraction is the slow change of world outside the window, as the hot plains fall away below and the train works up through forest, cuttings and tunnels into the cool uplands of the Nilgiris. Coonoor is the main intermediate station; beyond it the gradients ease, diesel locomotives take over, and the line continues past Wellington, Lovedale and Ketti to Ooty. Even the ticketing belongs to another era — the railway still issues old-style printed card tickets, a detail kept in step with its heritage status.
Getting there
Coonoor station lies at the heart of Coonoor town, the midpoint of the line. The nearest airport is Coimbatore International (CJB), about 44 km away in a straight line. The journey proper begins at Mettupalayam, the junction with the broad-gauge network, where the overnight Nilgiri Express from Chennai connects with the morning train up the mountain.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Nilgiri Mountain Railway (NMR), colloquially called the "Toy Train" by locals, is a 1,000 mm metre gauge railway in Nilgiris district, Tamil Nadu, India, built by the British in 1908. The railway is operated by the Southern Railway and is the only rack railway in India.
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