Ooty’s Nilgiri Mountain Railway Train & Station – 3 PCs 1910
Three 1910 photo postcards of Ooty’s Nilgiri Mountain Railway Train and railway station. In comparison to regular trains, travel by a mountain railway train tends to have greater appeal, beauty, with an old-world charm. The train and stations are virtually unchanged since their inception. Looking out from a chugging mountain train is like being in another world altogether.
Passing by is the incredible beauty of the mountains, literally a seeing-is-believing scene. There are five hill railways in India with each having an allure of its own. The five are the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, Kalka-Simla Railway, Nilgiri Mountain Railway, Matheran Hill Railway, and the Kangra Valley Railway.
The beautiful images shown here is of the Nilgiri Mountain Railway’s (NMR) Train hurtling towards Fernhill. The Fernhill Station is a stop before Ooty Station. The train apparently is fast approaching the Ooty Railway Station shown in one postcard and passing the over 150 years British built St Thomas Church on the other. The famous man-made lake of Ooty appears in two of the postcards. The section between Mettupalayam and Coonoor opened in 1899. The section from Coonoor to Ooty opened up in 1908.
Did you know – the NMR is the only one of its kind in Asia. It operated on the “rack and pinion” system, to combat the steep gradient of the mountains. The only other place to see similar “rack” railways is in distant Switzerland.
Past posts – Antique Painting of Madras Fort St George., Inauguration Of Indian Airlines By Nehru, 1953 Photo., Coonoor In Nilgiris – Old Postcard 1910., 1948 Mumbai Great Cyclone – Two Old Newspaper Pages.
