RAILWAY SAMACHAR

First Revolving Restaurant On Track

Opened On 24th April Nagpur's SECR Muesium

Nagpur : If you are looking for an air conditioned revolving restaurant where you can spend an evening with your chums amidst rolling green surroundings, Nagpur is the place to turn to. The South East Central Railway Narrow Gauge Museum, inaugurated in December 2002 on the eve of the 150th anniversary of Indian Railways houses everything a narrow gauge heritage enthusiast may be looking for. For the location of the museum here, the authorities decided to use the dilapidated South Eastern Railway broad gauge steam loco shed, which after a major refurbishment, now houses the indoor exhibits.

The other artifact that was left untouched was the broad gauge turntable. For many years, visitors would find two ancient narrow gauge coaches lying unattended on the turntable, until finally a novel way of using them was devised.

The carriages were tastefully refurbished, the interiors were redesigned as a restaurant, and a vestibule connection added. Mr Kumar Newar, Manager of the museum, is enthusiastic about this innovation. "We are going to have LCD television here, and the restaurant is going to commence operation shortly, with snacks and eatables outsourced from a reputable restaurant," he says. Newar, formerly a Senior Section Engineer with the SEC Railway workshop in Motibagh, has a motor drive with reduction gear fitted to the turntable, making the whole assembly rotate slowly taking about 12 minutes for a full turn. The movement is a bit wobbly, but only serves to heighten the pleasure making you feel as though you are moving along in a slow train trundling along the track.

Landscaping of the museum grounds was sanctioned by the General Manager, SEC Railway, Bilaspur, and the effect is quite pleasing, resembling a park with well-watered grass and shrubs, slides and swings, old style benches, and a toy train which children find irresistible taking them on a long circuitous ride along the periphery of the 4.5 acre museum grounds.

Indoor exhibits include a large assortment of artifacts from a bygone age, kept in glass showcases, and forming a number of galleries. There are static models of locomotives and carriages on display, builder's plates, signalling equipment, hand-lamps and old telephone sets, a ground frame used for operating points, locomotive fittings, besides various other objects of interest. The archive houses a collection of rare stamps as well as old documents, locomotive specifications and diagrams, and railway manuals

For children, the greatest attraction indoors, besides an auditorium where films are screened, is a model room run by Narsing Das Bang. Over 60 years of age, Bang is a keen model rail enthusiast, and has set up his layout in a room specially allotted to him by permission, and has an impressive layout with 1 and HO model trains of German make complete with working points and signals.

Besides a diesel-hydraulic locomotive and a narrow gauge royal carriage built in 1899 by Orenstein Koppel of Germany, the principal attraction indoors is a 5 Bagnall 0-6-4 narrow gauge tank loco weighing 15 tons and having a maximum speed of 25 kmph. This baby tank engine is no old junkie—built in 1916 by Bagnall Limited, Stafford, England, this loco was reconditioned for a heritage run in 2002, and can be seen resplendent in bright red livery and polished brass fittings.

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Placed on a low `pedestal' outside the main building is a 39.5 ton 4-6-2 steam loco manufactured in 1907 by the North British Loco Company, Glasgow, UK. Cross over the lawn and you find yourself in a little `yard' complete with turnouts and a level crossing gate. Here you will find stabled a 1957 make steam crane of Italian make coupled to a goods brake van, and on the adjoining track, an oil tanker, old goods wagons and heritage carriages in the usual maroon-red livery.

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Narrow gauge, we are told, is rapidly passing into history. As I sat in calm solitude next to the guard's van eating my lunch, with the long silence pierced only by the chirp of birds and the far off cries of children, I couldn't help wistfully feeling that these objects, now immobile and silent, were once part of a great system throbbing with life and energy. Narrow gauge will soon fade away, but these remnants will remain, each with a story behind it.

WELCOME TO THE RAILWAYS OF IMPERIAL INDIA

This website sets out to capture the flavour of the Railways of the Raj, that giant colossus set up and equipped by the British and founded on the power of steam. We take a look at impressions, reminiscences and memoirs, pictures, extracts from diaries, even that odd letter Aunt Jane wrote telling how she was stranded at Bombay Victoria Terminus station back in the twenties...