Amitava Banerjee, MP, 7 June 2024, Darjeeling: There are good tidings for the Railway enthusiasts visiting Darjeeling.
The popular New Jalpaiguri-Darjeeling passenger is all set to roll from Sunday, after being temporarily suspended owing to track repairs. However, the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR) joyrides were plying.
The World Heritage DHR is one of the main tourist attractions of Darjeeling. With the ongoing tourist rush most of the services, especially the joyrides are packed to capacity.
Missing out on the joyrides many avail the Darjeeling-NJP passenger service to get an experience of the DHR. “We had to suspend the services from June 4 owing to damage to the side formation wall between Ghayabari and Mahanadi.
Repair work on this and maintenance of tracks is underway. The service will resume on June 9,” stated Priyansh, Director, DHR talking to the Millennium Post.
To cater to the ongoing rush the Northeast Frontier Service has introduced an additional diesel locomotive DHR joyride service, starting from Thursday.
“This service has been introduced keeping in mind the ongoing rush as all the joy rides are running to capacity. This service will run till June 30,” added the Director. This service departs from Darjeeling station at 3:30 pm and reaches Ghoom, 8km away at 4:15 pm.
After a break of 20 minutes at the picturesque Ghoom railway station, the highest railway station in India, it departs for Darjeeling at 4:35 pm. It is scheduled to reach Darjeeling at 5:05 pm.
The train has 3 first-class chair cars with a combined capacity of accommodating 89 passengers.
At present, there are 11 joyride services, including 4 steam. The earnings of the DHR last year had smashed all previous records. Sabyasachi De, the Chief Public Relations officer of NFR said that the DHRs earnings between April and December 2023 was Rs 17.3 crore.
During this period 1,45,872 passengers had boarded the DHR trains. In 1879 work first started on the DHR, then called the Darjeeling Steam Tramways. The name of the rail company was then changed to Darjeeling Himalayan Railway Company in 1881.
Courtesy & source- Millennium Post
https://www.millenniumpost.in/bengal/dhr-darjeeling-njp-passenger-service-to-resume-from-sunday-567050