Place · mountain rack railway · India
Nilgiri Mountain Railway
The Nilgiri Mountain Railway, completed to Ooty in 1908, which uses an Abt rack and pinion on its steepest section — the only rack railway in India — to climb from Mettupalayam at three hundred metres to two thousand two hundred, at an average speed under ten kilometres an hour.
- Date
- 1899–1908
- Function
- Travel & migration
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 11.400, 76.700
Worth knowing
The gradient reaches one in twelve, the steepest on any Indian line, and the locomotive pushes from behind rather than pulling so that a coupling failure cannot send the train down the hill. It was added to the Mountain Railways property in 2005, and the X-class steam engines that work the rack section are the last of their kind anywhere.
Connections (1)
- Architectural modelMountain railways: Darjeeling
Darjeeling climbs two thousand metres on a two-foot gauge by loops and zigzags because tunnelling was too expensive; the Nilgiri line uses a rack and pinion on the Coonoor gradient, the only one in India. Two engineering answers to the same problem, thirty years and two thousand kilometres apart, and both still working with steam on parts of the route.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Nilgiri Mountain Railway”. UNESCO nomination file for the Mountain Railways of India, 2005 extension; Indian Railways heritage directorate records.
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