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July 17, 1997

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Chugging into Chota Nagpur

... the oddball rail lines around Ranchi

Bill Aitken

While a main line journey between Bombay and Delhi will reveal, if not a plethora of little lines branching off from the straight and narrow, then certainly a herringbone pattern between Godhra and Billimora. The equivalent trunk travel east yields today only one surviving feeder line of the lesser gauge.

Formerly at Dehri on Sone at the privately operated Dehri-Rohtas Light Railway ran to Tiura Pipradih while a sister concern steamed in the environs of Patna. Now only at Barddhaman junction do you get a time-tabled narrow gauge connection that leads (if you change trains) to the legendary Ahmadpur, home of the best known complaint, issuing from a dhoti-clad passenger caught short on a diet of jack-fruit "running with lota in one hand while that damn guard blowing his whistle with the other." (Barddhaman, lest those bewildered by its lexicographical immaculate rebirth fail to place it, is the common garden Burdwan gone brahmanical.)

While West Bengal yields rich pickings in steam culture thanks to its proximity to the coal fields, its tourist infrastructure--at least to the old tourist's bones -- leaves a lot to be desired. It was for this reason that I skirted the heart of the golden province and preferred the green delights of Jharkhand, passing from the little line out of Ranchi to its interrupted section at Purulia.

From Delhi I caught the Hatia-Tata Express that veered away from the Gangetic line at Chunar as though drawn to the minerally rich backwoods we now traversed at a very sedate gait. According to a commercial traveller sharing the same compartment, to avoid the big loop the train would make to gain the plateau at Ranchi, we should alight at Daltonganj and take a bus. An old timer

This travelling companion was an amiable guide to the green passages our train made through the thick jungle growth. Also he was well read and particularly fond of capping his commentary with a well chosen couplet from Palgrave's Golden Treasury. Apparently he wanted to be a poet but the family insisted he succeed his father in selling irrigation equipment to drought prone customers. Drought was clearly not his problem for after the apt couplet he uncapped a half bottle of rum and allowed himself a full-throated swig. By the time we reached Ranchi the liquid intake and poetic outputhad reached the level of Dylan Thomas.

The Ranchi railway station catering to both broad and narrow line traffic still wears a rural air in spite of the heavy industrial throughput. Its station building is a charming pink stone composition reminiscent of those crow-stepped exteriors that grace the West Highland line of Scotland. Almost opposite is the beautifully ensconced Railway Hotel which in colonial days vied with the BNR hotel in Puri as the choicest home in the region. (The Ranchi Hotel went by the name of "Beaner" though now its name board announces affiliation with the South-Eastern Railway.)

Life along the tracks Much as I would have liked to put up in its lush compound, the single-story buildings offered no hope of a peep over the high wall which separated the road traffic from the fascinating railway activity on the other side. To catch that, I booked into a modern lodge next door whose flat roof-top permitted the perfect survey of Ranchi's unique marshalling yard. The narrow gauge line ran up a ramp above the empty broad gauge wagons waiting below and by the simplest mode of gravity allowed the ore trains of the lesser gauge to be transferred cheaply if noisily to a main line destination.

Continued


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