Rewari: Steam Locomotive Shed and Rail Museum
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As in 2022
Sharad Kohli | TNN, January 7, 2023: The Times of India
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Age is just a number at the Steam Locomotive Shed and Rail Museum at Rewari near Delhi. The shed itself will complete 130 years next year, and all of its occupants, barring one, have seen at least 60 summers. They lead a retired life, but when duty calls they can still do some heavy hauling.
Take Shaktiman, for instance. Bullet-nosed and with a silver star pattern painted around its main lamp, this 64-year-old has had a busy year. You will see it in the film ‘Emergency’ in 2023, besides the web series ‘Sultan of Delhi’.
Like Shaktiman, 5 of its 11 stablemates – 4 metre-gauge and 2 broadgauge locomotives – are in working order and can be fired up at 6 hours’ notice for a film shoot, ceremonial run or demo.
Long Live The Queen
The Rewari shed’s most famous resident is a small locomotive named Fairy Queen. Brought to India in 1855 as the engine ‘EIR 22’, it was for many years the oldest working locomotive in the country until ‘EIR 21’, its twin from the Leeds workshop of M/s Kitson Thompson & Hewitson, upstaged it recently. Over 167 years old now, the ‘Queen’ first saw service in Kolkata, where it plied between Howrah and Raniganj, tugging light mail trains. This steam loco then towed troop trains during the 1857 War of Independence before being used for supervising line construction in Bihar, where it was retired in 1909.
Until 1942, the Queen stood on a plinth outside Howrah railway station. Then it was removed to the railway zonal training school in Chandausi, Uttar Pradesh, in 1943. Its luck turned when the Union government decided to pull it out of oblivion in 1972 and conferred heritage status upon it. After a complete restoration at the loco workshop in Perambur, Chennai, it resumed work in 1997. Designed for a top speed of 40kmph,the Fairy Queen evokes a more laid-back era when trains crisscrossed the country whistling and blowing clouds of smoke. It used to do the New Delhi-Alwar heritage run in 7 hours – a pace that would not have been out of place a century ago. Before the pandemic, it used to chug from Delhi Cantonment to Rewari on every second and fourth winter Saturday with a load of weekend tourists.
Made On 3 Continents
Seventy-five years separate Fairy Queen from Riga, the second oldest loco at the Rewari shed. She came out of the Leeds-based Hudswell Clarke & Co Ltd Railway Foundry in 1930, and was put to work without a name – bearing just the number 1644 – at a new sugar mill in Riga, Bihar. That’s how she got her current name.
Angadh (1934) and Sher-e-Punjab both came out of the Vulcan Foundry Company Ltd in Merseyside, but the latter was built after WW-II. One of the Rewari locos named Viraj was built at Baldwin Locomotive Works, Philadelphia, while Shaktiman, surprisingly, was born at Fabryka Lokomotyw in Poland. The six other locos were all made in India.
While Akbar – the youngest at 57 years – and Azad were made at Chittaranjan Locomotive Works in West Bengal, Rewari King, Sahib, Sindh and Sultan are products of TELCO, the Tata Engineering and Locomotive Company. Of these, Sahib, Sindh and Sultan are namesakes of the three engines that hauled India’s first passenger train from Bori Bunder in Mumbai to Thane, on April 16, 1853. That train had 14 carriages and covered the distance of 33. 8km in 57 minutes.
Last Custodian Of Steam
When it opened in 1893, the Rewari loco shed fell under the jurisdiction of the Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway. It grew into the largest metre-gauge locomotive shed in India, and employed almost 500 maintenance staff at its peak, looking after trains headed for Delhi, Bathinda, Churu and Phulera, among other destinations.
Today, 29 years after being shut down, and 20 years on from being revived anddeclared a heritage building, it is an atmospheric memorial to India’s railway past at a time when most other shed-cumworkshops – Chittaranjan, Kharagpur, Liluah and Tindharia in West Bengal, Jamalpur in Bihar, and Coonoor in Tamil Nadu – focus on maintaining only the engines in commercial use.
The shed, which lies to the north of Rewari railway station, is left with only 33 maintenance personnel, so the actual repair and refurbishment of locomotives has to be done elsewhere. The vintageengines require overhaul every 3-4 years. When TOI visited the shed, one locomotive was in Perambur and another in Amritsar. But Viraj, which had just received a fresh coat of paint and was being hosed down, looked impressive. “We are not able to carry out overhauling because we just don’t have the expertise or skilled workforce available,” shed in-charge RH Meena said. “But we are trying to make the new generation aware of this heritage, and do whatever is required to keep these engines in a robust condition. ”
SCREEN ENGINES
Most of the Rewari locos have played a part in films. Akbar (below) has appeared in the Hindi films ‘Gadar: Ek Prem Katha’, ‘Gangs of Wasseypur’ and ‘Bhaag Milkha Bhaag’, Tamil film ‘Vijay 61’ and Malayalam film ‘Pranayam’. Azad made an appearance in ‘Rang De Basanti’ and ‘Guru’; Sher-ePunjab in ‘Gandhi My Father’, and Viraj in ‘Veer’ and ‘Love Aaj Kal’
