Asia > India > Himachal Pradesh > Shimla > Articles > The Story of the Kalka Shimla Railway Line

It was more than a hundred years ago, over terrain that seen little more than a plough turn it, that a series of steam driven pile drivers, shovels and elaborate tunnelling equipment arrived. One of the world’s most challenging engineering feats was in progress - the construction of the Kalka Shimla Railway Line. When complete, it would cover 96.54 kilometres of mountainous track and rise up from sultry Kalka at 640 metres to a far more cool and salubrious Shimla at 2,060 metres. Initially, the gauge had been set at two feet, but on the recommendation of the military this was expanded to the standard two feet six inches (the norm on hill railways). Interestingly, the cold steel of the rails is still turned by hand - with teams of up to thirty men working on a single piece. The ruling gradient of the track is one in thirty-three.

Of all the stories told along the Kalka Shimla Railway Line, there is perhaps none as fascinating as that of Bhalku, a common labourer who worked on the track. The tale goes that he had long matted hair which was infested with lice and which he used to feed by pouring sugar and flour over his head. He claimed that the path the line should take had been revealed to him by his devta, a deity who communicated with him through the lice. Trailed by the engineers and their theodolites and plane tables, he would march with a tall staff over the hills - it is said that even H.S. Harington, the Agent of the Railway, was in awe of Bhalku’s ‘supernatural’ powers and always deferred to him. The Kalka Shimla Railway Line is supposed to have been built on exactly this pathway ‘revealed’ by Bhalku.

The tale of Bhalku ‘Maharaj’ or Bhalku ‘Baba’, as he was soon called, does not end there. His services were soon in such heavy demand that he was taken to wherever a bridge or road was to be built. The time came when he was so fed up with the pressure that he went on a pilgrimage and ‘disappeared’ in the temple at Badrinath - a variation of the story says that he was not seen after entering the temple of Jagannath, at Puri.

The idea of a rail link to Shimla had been presented as early as November 1847 by a correspondent of the Delhi Gazette - this was six years before the first train whistled through the Indian subcontinent running between Bombay and Thane. He wrote, “We may then see these cooler regions become the permanent seat of a Government daily invigorated by a temperature adapted to refresh a European constitution, and keep the mental power in a state of health, alike beneficial to rulers and the ruled.”

Within two decades of this observation, Shimla had officially become the ‘summer capital’ of British India and a staggering one-fifth of the human race began being ruled for the better part of the year from this tiny town and the tenuous telegraph. The nineteenth century was at an end when work finally began on the line that would carry some of the most powerful people in this part of the world and add to the enduring romance of railway travel.

The track was built by a private company under the supervision of H.S. Harington Chief Engineer and Agent of the Kalka Shimla Railway. It was on 9th November 1903 that the line was opened to traffic as a link from the Delhi- Ambala-Kalka branch of the East Indian Railway. The broad-gauge line and the puffing giants ended at Kalka and then, smaller locomotives and ‘toy carriages’ took the thirty inch gauge. Initially there were 107 tunnels but in 1930, as some of them were defunct, they were reduced to 103. Today, there are a 102 but for tradition’s sake, the line is still referred to have a 103 - the figure it has had for most of its life. Number 46, which was near the Solan Brewery, is no longer there. There are eight hundred bridges and nine hundred curves; during its course through the picturesque countryside the line goes through a succession of reverse curves of over thirty-six metres radii. The bridges along the track resemble Roman aqueducts and are replete with skilled craftsmanship - the longest arch viaduct has an aggregate length of 2.8 kilometres. The water culverts are elaborately stone-worked and the line is protected by tall revetments.

It is perhaps the tunnels and bridges that have added much to the character of the line. All the tunnels were built between 1900 and 1903. The longest one is at Barog and is over a kilometre long. The original alignment of the Barog tunnel was set about a kilometre above the existing one. Digging began from both sides of the hill and after a fair amount of burrowing had been done, it was realised that the ends would never meet. The engineer, a Col. S. Barog, was fined one rupee for the wastage. Unable to stomach this, this unverified story continues, he went for a walk along with his dog and shot himself. Seeing him bleeding, the dog raced for help, but the engineer was already dead by the time the villagers and workers arrived. The place and the station were then named after him. Today, above the station, in a thicket of oak and pine, the head of the old tunnel can still be seen. This has been barred and gated and, interestingly, the abandoned bore now provides water that is piped to nearby Dharampur. Col. Barog is supposed to be buried in front of the old tunnel, but there is no trace of the grave and the small grove of pines is overrun with thorn bushes and congress grass.

The old ‘absolute block system’ using Neale’s token instruments is still in use. The system is worked by the station master on duty. For the ‘up’ and ‘down’ directions, each station has a ‘home signal’ and a ‘starter signal’. The latter can only be lowered by a key released from the token instrument when permission to proceed has been given by the station ahead. Every linesman who inspects the track has a beat of nine kilometres and if he discovers an obstruction - which could be a landslip or fallen tree - he places crackers on the rails for several metres in both directions. These explode under the wheels of an advancing engine and give enough margin to jam the brakes - this is aside from the man who rushes to flag down the train.

Just short of Shimla is the station of Tara Devi. When the tunnel had to be dug through the hill, many locals declared that the deity, whose temple was above, would never allow it. There was great excitement one day as the word spread that a huge serpent had appeared and effectively stopped work. The great snake turned out to be a pipe pumping fresh air to the workers. Later, for a short period, the Tara Station had a ‘plague inspection post’ to prevent the pestilence from reaching Shimla’s power-filled heights. The stop soon got be named Aap ka naam - baap ka naam, as visitors had to fill out a whole series of details which included their names, addresses, the address where they would be staying at in Shimla and things that only heaven and the C.I.D knew about. The post was normally under the charge of a young member of the Indian Civil Service and anecdotes abound. One of rules of the post was that all passengers travelling in any class under First would have to undergo fumigation and the story is told of the ruler of an Indian princely state who came to Shimla in his private train. This had no divisions and classes, and going by the letter to his orders, the officer ordered fumigation of all the passengers. The fuming Raja ordered his train back to Kalka with his secretary writing long letters of protest.

For what was one of the most expensive tracks to build, this line remains an expensive line to maintain. And even today, small stations along the Kalka Shimla Line have mellifluous names like Koti, Kanoh, Solan and Barog. The tiny coaches of the toy train glide easily past the trimmed hedges and gabled roofs. The ride itself is like the gentle cadence of a softly changing melody and every turn in the hills adds a fresh stanza. In the background there remains the lilt of the train’s motion and the refrain of the engine’s whistle.

From bare brown hills mottled with bamboo, cactus, euphorbia and exposed boulders, the line enters the alpine reaches of the lower Himalaya. Tall grasses sway and the pines tentatively and then determinedly appear. The views expand, the ranges undulate and as a just reward for a long journey, the last few kilometres before Shimla are spent in a lush forest of oak and rhododendron.

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