Trainspotting: Getting the Dope - Delhi

[Roobarb]

Thanks for your comments everyone.


Slap - the only two problems with me doing a Delhi food thread are:

1) I really don't know me bhati from me aloo when it comes to the local food

2) In order to get down and dirty with a proper review of Indian food I would still need to be prepared for some dirty downtime afterwards.

On saying that it's far from a bad idea for a thread. I could perhaps break myself in gently by reviewing some of the local deli food before reviewing the local Delhi food?

"This is a lovely slice of quiche lorraine, and ooh, ooh, look over there: they've got stuffed olives..."

[Roobarb]

So where were we?

Goodness, 25 posts already and I've barely made it past the gate.

Time to get some bearings:



The entrance gate is at the top, just below where the car park is. The 'MTR' engine from a previous post is just inside the gate.

The museum is largely outdoors, running from the white circular building on the left, past the kidney shaped green thing (actually a pond with a snack shop in the middle) and down to the bottom left.

Once past the gate you walk up the service road to somewhere near to the circular building, after which you are in the park and free to wander as you want. for those who like to know where they are all the time, we meandered from the top left to the bottom right and back again in a sort of clockwise fashion.

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Having just looked through the acreage of largely irrelevant posts I've made so far I get the distinct feeling that I've been avoiding the next bit. In all honestly I know very little about any of the engines here (or indeed anywhere), and so have no idea what I'll say about them.

Anyway, here goes:



It's a steam engine.

Um, quite a big one it appears...


This is followed by a couple of open sided sheds with another engine or two:



A green one that, according to the small expert in these matters who was accompanying me, is not even a distant relation of Percy



Obvious really.

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The next one had a crown on its funnel that gave it a rather regal look.




Immediately behind it was this rather ratty looking carriage



But, being one of the few exhibits with a sign saying what it is, it appears that it also has something of a royal claim




Peering in through the windows there's what I assume to be a staff area at one end:




And, if you can make it out past the gloom and the reflection on the glass, what I assume to be the royal suite.




I have to say it's not what you would call palatial. Sitting in that thing with no air conditioning for hours on end as it slowly clanked though the dusty Indian interior must have been quite tiresome.

Reminds me more of the sort of thing you might use nowadays to transport prisoners rather than royals, unless you didn't like the royal very much - which might be a consideration here?

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Opposite the engine sheds is housed something that is a genuine oddity.

It is a steam powered monorail.



Not the prettiest of things but the theory behind the Patiala Monorail was sound:

- A really good way of minimising the rolling friction of a vehicle is to use steel wheels on a flat steel surface (hence build a railway)

- One of the complicated parts of building a railway is ensuring that both rails rise/fall/bank in conjunction with each other to minimise the chances of a train derailing. Just building a single rail is much easier to deal with.

- A limitation of a railway is that corners can't be too tight due to curve resistance. If the outside wheel can't keep up with the inside wheel then there is a chance that the train can derail. Anyone who has been on a Hong Kong tram as it judders and shakes it way around the tight corners would have felt the effect.

How it worked therefore was that a single rail was laid next to a road. The engine places about 95% of its weight on the single rail and 5% on a wheel attached to an outrigger that runs on the edge of the road.




Friction is therefore kept to a minimum, there's no need to be too accurate about how the rail is laid (keeps it cheap and simple) and you can weave it through fairly tight city streets.




The coaches and wagons it hauled worked on the same principle




The great thing is that the engine still runs, and from time to time they fire it up and take it for a run around the museum. Here's a video someone else shot of it and put on Youtube - if I can work out how to attach it.



Gosh, if the you tube link works that was really easy, I spent ten minutes messing about trying to be clever before simply cutting and pasting the URL...

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A bit further along is this diesel electric thing




From the days when the UK actually made stuff

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I know nothing at all about this one



To my uneducated eyes it does look sort of American in shape, with the big light and the cow catcher and, er, whitewall tyres. I suspect though it was locally built.


A view back down the tracks

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Now, this was one that I did listen to the newlyweds' audio commentary on, and since then I can remember nothing about what they said other than it is an American engine, and they pointed out that it had a massive tender



Roobarb minor seems suitably impressed





I didn't get a decent side picture so the one below I nicked off Tripadvisor's site. Must have been taken a few years back as there seems to be a lot more rust now.

Davis, given you were here back in the '80s I suspect that many of the exhibits are now a bit more 'weathered' than you would have remembered them. It's really a shame that there is not a better maintenance programme.



I don't know if it is just my imagination, but US engines seem to have much more in the way of pipes and things on the sides of their boilers than UK ones. Gives them a purposeful look, albeit in a sort of 'Back to the Future' way.

[Roobarb]

Turntable - yup, knocked together in a shed in the UK and then shipped all the way out to India.



Talking of tables turning, I wonder if in 100 years time there will be Indians and Chinese staring in incredulity at heavy engineering from their countries that was shipped to the west around this time, wondering why a poor, third world country like the UK wouldn't have made the things themselves rather than buy them from a country as developed (and expensive) as theirs.

It's tempting to think that whatever these guys make now would have fallen apart long before that happens, but...

[Roobarb]

Yes, it is exactly as it looks. I think these things were called Rail Cars, for fairly obvious reasons:



From what I understand, these were used on fairly small, remote lines such as the ones serving hill stations and tea plantations. Like the Patiala State Monorail, not necessarily the prettiest solution but eminently practical.

Here's a picture (of a picture) of something similar doing its stuff:



Actually, whilst trying to find some information on the net to give me something to write about I came across another forum with a thread started by the Director of the National Rail Museum asking for help in restoring this back in 2009

http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/pre-war/104105-national-rail-museum-matheran-rail-car.html


It seems that the museum is mainly supported by the passion of the few rather than actual money as sadly, whilst the will was clearly there to restore this in 2009, four years later and there is little change.

[Roobarb]

Next up, a pair of huge Swiss Electric engines

First one:

Named Sir Leslie Wilson after the Governor of Bombay, this was one of the earliest electric locomotives in India. I understand it was imported in 1928, the year it's namesake (the Governor) left.



Apparently the design is referred to as being a crocodile locomotive because of the long 'snout' at each end. The first ten of these cane from the Swiss factory, after which they were built under license in Lancashire, UK in the very cool sounding Vulcan Foundry.

Well thought out wheel and axle configuration too, ideal for the Indian market as it creates a useful shaded space underneath for a chapatti and a chinwag.

[Roobarb]

The second of the Swiss Electric engines is next.

The Sir Roger Lumley also arrived in India in 1928. This, according to Wikipedia at least, was the first ever electric locomotive to be used in India.

For me though there is another reason I am left thinking about this one.





It's probably a combination of the name and the obvious amounts of undercarriage on show that reminds me of another Lumley with some fairly fine underpinnings.



Whilst the primary purpose of the research is obviously to have a bit of a perv at a wonderful set of legs, there is a bit of a link as Joanna Lumley was actually born in India and I wanted to see if she was in any way related to Sir Roger.

From the two minutes I spent on the question it appears not. Sir Roger was the Governor of Bombay from 1937 to 1943, Joanna was born after then. They could be related, but somehow my research started to wander off course before I could find out.



A fine woman...

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Changing gear a bit we come to a funny little train, it's almost cartoon-like in its proportions:




Since my first visit the paint has been stripped off the engine and the carriages seem to have improved in their appearance, so it does seem that this particular combination is undergoing a bit of a restoration.




It's pretty old this one:




I did find a picture of a similar looking train on Wikipedia, called a Darjeeling Himalayan Railway Class B



The name would lead one to believe that it clanked around in the hillier areas of northern India. I suppose that it was probably the next step up from the Rail Car we saw earlier. The funny small sized carriages now seem to make a bit more sense.

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We've finally reached the far end of the museum, and at the end is a small tunnel that the Toy Train runs through. On top of that is a tiny engine, which can also be seen from the main road.



Again, I remember very little about what the audio guides said other than it was, as far as locomotives go, very small indeed. Possibly the smallest one ever in India.


Having watched the file "The Railway Children" a few weeks back, I think the kids are doing a sort of reenactment as the Toy Train runs into the tunnel below.




Nice to see that at least the road-facing topiary is kept in good shape

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Going to the other end of the spectrum in terms of size, immediately below the tunnel is this huge great thing:



As is probably quite clear my knowledge of steam trains is limited. However I mentioned this to a chum of mine who knows about this sort of thing and at the mention of the Beyer Garratt he became all misty-eyed.




The idea of the Garratt was to give two separate engines with one single, large boiler slung between them. What this meant was that you only needed one crew rather than two for the same amount of power.

The Garratts could have a far larger diameter boiler than conventionally configured engines (whilst keeping the centre of gravity within reasonable bounds) as there was no need to allow room for wheels underneath it. The larger diameter also meant that boilers could be shorter in length than ones of the same volume on a conventional engine, which allowed for greater maneuverability.

Garratts were exported all over the world, to places as diverse as New Zealand, the USSR, Brazil, Rhodesia and Iran. Oddly though, few were ever used in Britain.

This one seems to have some form of water catching device underneath it, at least I think that's what it is:

[Roobarb]

The photo below is of the same locomotive taken some time ago at the museum. I'm not too sure when the photo is from, but judging by the growth of the trees it was more than a few years back.



The sad truth is that this is another piece of history that is in decline

[Roobarb]

Earlier on I had suggested that I thought the Mallard, the fastest recorded steam locomotive, marked the peak of steam engine design, but in retrospect I now think I was wrong.

Mallard was undoubtedly a technological wonder, but ultimately all it did was take you from London to Manchester ten minutes sooner than its predecessor. Besides that, in the greater scheme of things, technology had already overtaken Mallard. The only reason that it's record remains unbroken is that the record became irrelevant almost as soon as it was achieved.

The Garratt opened up entire continents, linking up far-flung parts of the empire. It hauled the raw materials that fuelled progress. It pushed the boundaries of what was possible by adding scale in an enormous way.



It is an absolute representation of the Victorian style of engineering that had driven the development of the steam engine since its inception.

Perhaps then this is why the Garratt, along with some of the large locomotives similarly opening up the frontiers in North America, is actually what represents the pinnacle of steam engine design. After this point no steam engine was going to do any more to drive progress.



It was in some ways though a dinosaur before it had ever been developed. The two Swiss Electric engines we saw earlier, both in use in India for two years before this Garratt was built, represented the beginning of viable alternatives to steam.






The world was about to change. The empire that the Garratt was sent to serve was soon to disappear.

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And so the age of steam was over



First in continental Europe, then in the UK and North America, cleaner and more efficient means of powering locomotives began to take over.



Steam engines around the world ended up being consigned to sidings such as this, awaiting their fate.

[Roobarb]

Most would be cut up for scrap, others would gently rot away in forgotten corners of the world.





With the death of steam, so the requirements to service the steam railways died.

British industry, once at the forefront of railway technology, was now just one of many sources of supply, more often than not representing the old rather than the new way of doing things.

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Enthusiasts talk about the magnificence of steam engines. It's not a word that I would probably use but I do see what they mean.



Unlike the quiet hum of an electric motor, or the constant rumble of a diesel engine, these were living things. They needed constant attention to get the best out of them. Stop feeding them coal and water and they die. They panted plumes of steam and smoke as they worked harder. They literally had fire in their bellies.



Somehow it is rather sad to walk amongst the shells of what had once lived and breathed, machines that helped drive the progress of humankind, only to end up being a victim of it.

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One wonders what will happen to some of these engines. The museum is clearly doing what it can to keep them from the scrapyard, but there is so much to do.





It doesn't seem the pace of restoration can outrun the slow but constant decline

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It was about this time that I was snapped out of my somewhat melancholy state by a more immediate problem.

"Daddy, I'm hungryyyy"

Now the problem is that, being a father, the thought of having to feed the kids had not really occurred to me and eating options at the museum are very, very limited.

There is a little snack bar thing which has a fridge with water and a few boxes of juice and they generally sell one or two varieties of crisps or biscuits, but it really depends on what the guy who runs it has bought from the local shop to resell there.

The other thing to note is that it seems to shut between 12.30 and 1.00 pm for, er, lunch.

This time we managed to rustle up a meal that I was rather proud of. It was only when quizzed later that evening I learned the error of my ways.



A Limca (fizzy lemonade thing) for the older one, and an orange juice thing for the younger one and a rather odd fruitcake to eat.

I show this only to warn other fathers who think that this might be suitable fare for little 'uns to be wary that their mothers may think otherwise.

[Roobarb]

Suitably refreshed, and in an altogether happier state of mind we strolled past a few more exhibits:



This was an interesting one. It's a fireless steam engine.

Apparently it was built to work in a nitrate factory where for some reason they tend to frown on open flames.

What happens is that the bit that would have been the boiler in the front is actually a tank that is filled with pressurised steam, I guess through the valve affair at the front. The engine then sort of hisses around doing things until it, um, runs out of steam as it were, whereupon it is refilled.

Built by the Germans it appears.

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Some other exhibits:

A French job perhaps?

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Looks like an army truck, possibly with a mounting for some type of heavy gun in the centre, although it was full of stuff so I couldn't see to be sure.