Incredible metre gauge travel ends in Kerala
It was all over for the last metre gauge train in Kerala when the Punalur-Chencotta passenger train to Tamil Nadu pulled out of this city Sunday evening.Since Friday, innumerable number of people had been making a dash to the railway station near this city, 75 km from state capital Thiruvananthapuram, for a last ride on the century-old metre gauge track.
The Kollam-Chencotta metre gauge railway remains as a monument of British engineering technology on which work started in 1890 and opened in 1901.
The Kollam-Punalur (45 km) track has already been converted into broad gauge. The next stretch to be converted is the Punalur-Chencotta (46 km) and work is all set to start with this metre gauge train being pulled out of service.
During the British raj, people had set the time of their clocks and watches according to the arrival of the train underlining the precision and punctuality of the service. With the passing of another day, they have to wait for at least two years to complete the process of gauge conversion and to hear the long nostalgic whistle of train.