Rail traffic restored on Kalka-Shimla track
By IANSThursday, July 1, 2010
SHIMLA - Rail traffic on the Kalka-Shimla track - a world heritage site - was restored after remaining disrupted for more than six hours Thursday in Himachal Pradesh, an official here said.
The engine of a passenger train, from Kalka in Haryana to Shimla, was derailed Thursday morning near Koti town. However, nobody was injured in the accident.
“Traffic on the rail line was normalised and the train from Shimla towards Kalka left at its normal time at 2.30 p.m.,” Shimla Railway Superintendent G.S. Rajput told IANS.
“Landslides on the track following heavy rainfall caused the derailment. Three train services from Kalka to Shimla and one from Shimla to Kalka were cancelled due to the derailment,” he added.
Each toy train - as it is popularly called - that runs on the century-old Kalka-Shimla rail line has seven coaches and can accommodate nearly 200 passengers.
The rail line, a 96-km-long narrow gauge railroad - originally built to ferry Europeans to Shimla, the then summer capital of British India - was chosen by Unesco as a world heritage site in 2008.
