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The Romance of Indian Railways

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BBC Four Collections -

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archive programmes chosen by experts.

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For this Collection, Gary Boyd-Hope

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has selected programmes celebrating Britain's steam railway legacy.

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More programmes on this theme

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and other BBC Four Collections

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are available on BBC iPlayer.

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NARRATOR: There are those who love the splendid steam train -

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the great and disappearing iron horse -

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and there are those who love India.

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And there are, happily, those who love both,

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knowing that the one was made by the other.

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WHISTLE BLOWS

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SITAR AND TABLA MUSIC

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To all romantic amateurs of the history that runs on rails

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and that which stands changelessly since the days of the nobles,

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this is an affectionate salaam to the past that created the present.

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Now, of course, development means diesel -

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a thing of little charm and no chuff, but that is progress.

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India makes her own engines now, and even exports them.

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Urban India couldn't live without its railways.

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Imagine the commuter traffic into one Bombay station alone

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of nearly 1.5 million a day -

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a rush-hour train every three minutes,

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each with 4,000 people aboard, or almost aboard -

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all packed so tight, it's almost impossible to pick a pocket.

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Of the 2,800 million Indians who use the railways every year,

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nearly half are commuters.

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The suburban lines have been electrified these 40-odd years -

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obviously had to be, to handle this sort of sardine traffic.

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How could India do without the electric train?

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Well, in many places, luckily it does.

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The Puffing Billy is still the workhorse of the countryside

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and of the hills, and its lover, historian, and defender of the faith

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is a dedicated English zealot

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whose life's purpose now is the preservation

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of the great Indian steam train in a permanent museum in Delhi.

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His name is Mike Satow.

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MIKE SATOW: The first railway that I can recall ever turning me on

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was the Matheran railway.

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I think that's one of the most exciting little railways,

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built most improbably, very little known by anyone outside India,

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but it stems from the early days of this century.

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It's the only link with Matheran and the outside world, and it represents

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a technical achievement of some magnitude,

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even though the scale is small.

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I think a very good historical relic of the sort of technical ingenuity

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that was being practised in the late 19th century.

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The railway itself is 12 miles of track,

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which on the map only covers four miles from point to point.

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But in the course of that it rises 2,000 feet,

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there are 281 curves, and probably the sharpest curve

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on any working railway in the world, because the radius is only 45 feet.

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And to get round these corners,

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they have special engines which were the brainchild

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of a dilettante engineer, Sir Arthur Haywood,

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a landed gentleman in Derbyshire,

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and his hobby was railways, and he used to build his own engines,

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and they are the only known examples of this type of engine in existence

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in the world, and furthermore they're all working, and working very well.

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There are four steam engines on this railway which,

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since 1907, have been hauling the trains up and lowering them down,

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outwardly rather conventional engines,

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but inwardly, rather complicated and very novel engines

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which must be a full justification for the design which went into them

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on a landed estate in Derbyshire.

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NARRATOR: Mike Satow was once managing director of ICI in India.

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For 15 years he lived in the country.

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Retired to England, he resolutely returns twice a year

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to the India he loves, and the trains he loves perhaps even more.

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36,000 miles of railway spread a net over India,

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uniting this huge country as nothing else could do.

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This was the one holy bountiful legacy bequeathed to India

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by a British Raj, perhaps the only one.

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It all began in Bombay

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and its memorial and temple is Victoria Terminus.

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Victoria Terminus was built, as was the manner of the 1880s,

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in the likeness of a shrine - a technological cathedral,

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a great caravanserai in the most flowering

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Victorian Gothic Saracenic Italianate Oriental St Pancras Baroque

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to the glory of her late Imperial Majesty,

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and that of the great steam train.

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So the British bequeathed to India the trains and the stations

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and the currency of a common language, and you might say,

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a touch of the class system too, though India had hardly need of that.

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The old times of the Raj also provided the rolling stock,

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and some of these old beauties still remain, largely thanks to Mike Satow,

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whose dream, now taking shape in Delhi, is the railway museum,

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where the first of the old iron elephants is going -

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not to die, but in fact to live.

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THEY CHANT IN NATIVE LANGUAGE

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Did you manage to get the boiler examination done before it came?

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- Yes. - What's it like?

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It is very good.

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- Is it? - You've got to test it.

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So that means, really, we've only got minor...odd minor repairs

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- like the front spring pins to do. - Yes, only minor repairs.

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- Has it been running? - Yes.

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MIKE SATOW: Fairy Queen is only the first of our exhibits.

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There are hundreds more to come.

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When the museum's finished, it should be the most comprehensive,

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perhaps one of the largest in the world.

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NARRATOR: 400 years ago, the great and wise Mughal Emperor,

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Akbar, built the city of Fatehpur Sikri near Agra,

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abandoned within 50 years because its wells ran dry.

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Now it is a thing of dead beauty, a monument.

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MIKE SATOW: I want to see India's industrial heritage preserved,

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as well as her monuments.

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After all, the Taj Mahal doesn't have much of a break-up value as scrap,

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but unfortunately a locomotive does.

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So unless we preserve them today, they'll just disappear.

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My wife, Peggy, of course, had rather different interests from mine.

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She was very much involved with Indian art, Indian music

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and charitable work,

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and on many occasions we'd been travelling together

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for long periods perhaps, in Indian trains. Because journeys are long,

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travel on railways over long distances

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becomes almost a way of life.

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A journey may take two, three, four, five days, even.

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And so you take your cooking equipment,

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you take your sleeping equipment, you may sleep in a railway coach,

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you may sleep on a station platform - life goes on,

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and in the course of it,

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you ultimately move across the subcontinent.

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NARRATOR: The evening brings that imperative of the night,

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the ubiquitous bedroll.

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The bedroll - turning up each evening.

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No-one who knows India will ever forget it, nor ever remember it

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without nostalgia maybe for the great railway names -

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the Frontier Mail, the Deccan Queen, the Brindavan, the Rajdhani Express -

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and even, perhaps, for the empire on which the sun did finally set.

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MIKE SATOW: One of the interesting things about the research work

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and the investigation work that I've been doing for this museum has been

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the need to go off into all sorts of very remote corners of India.

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The Rajasthan desert, for example,

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held out the prospect of finding a special class of five locomotives.

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I had reason to believe that some of the engines that were there

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had now disappeared, or were laid aside,

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so I wanted to go and investigate for myself

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what in fact was still working there.

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NARRATOR: What a place is India for the engineer - not only huge,

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but hostile - rivers to be bridged,

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jungles to be cut, mountains to be tunnelled.

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Nothing is easy in India, but it gets done.

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There are 1,750,000 Indians working on the railways,

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by far the biggest employer in the land.

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The gang men on the track pause to give a quick namaste

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to the official trolley.

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What sort of token system do you use here, or block system?

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This section, I suppose, is on Neale's ball token instrument.

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That's a small token, you know? I'll show you at the next station.

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And that instrument does lock and block.

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It cannot be operated by simultaneous coordination

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- of the two stationmasters. - I see.

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And not more than one token can be taken out from one end.

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So only one driver can have a token?

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Yes.

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NARRATOR: The signal system works with some elaboration.

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The points man takes the token from the trolley.

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He then inserts it in the signal.

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He takes the key...

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..approaches the lever...

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..and pulls it.

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The points then change.

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The points man runs over to the point and locks it.

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He pulls the signal lever, and the signal goes down.

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This wonderful rigmarole not only fulfils the Indian love

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of complication - it's also safe.

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- These are the gang men, you know. - Typical Rajasthan gang.

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Yes...

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You wouldn't have to ask anybody if you looked out of the window.

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Mr Vishlani's men, you see, they are belonging to a particular

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Rahat tribe, which used to be, in olden days, criminals.

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Were they? You've tamed them?

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Yes, before the railways came into being.

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After the railways are come into being, we have found them.

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MIKE SATOW: I went out into the Kamli Ghat section,

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on a single metre gauge line, and for working the heavy mineral trains,

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special engines were built in 1929, and they've been working there

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ever since, one engine on the front, one engine on the back.

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And since 1929, these five engines

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have been shouldering this massive task

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of moving the tonnage of freight up this incline,

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and they're still in fighting fettle.

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So you're re-laying this - this 75 pound?

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Yes. We have re-laid this track only about three years ago.

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Yeah? Is this old stuff over here?

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Yes, this is the stuff.

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- Let's have a look at it. - Have a look.

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I'll say it's old. Come here. Look!

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Look at this. It's got railing marks on it.

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These are 1887.

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These are older than anything I've got in the museum so far.

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- I didn't know that. - Yes, they are.

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I'd like some of these. So what are you doing with this?

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We imitate this weight of these old rail stores

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for disposal orders and scrap.

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Oh, right. Let's just see what lengths these are.

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Four, five, six...

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eight, nine...30-footers.

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Yes, you're absolutely right. These are 30-foot rails.

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- You are right. - Will you keep ten for me?

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Yes, excellent.

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Kindly get the orders so that I have the necessary authority.

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All right. I'll do that.

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HORN BLASTS

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NARRATOR: The Indian railways are an enormous absorbent of labour -

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the one commodity, perhaps, of which the nation is never short.

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They are as hierarchical as India itself.

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There are those who are saluted, and there are those who salute.

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Those 36,000 miles of railway track need endless maintenance,

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and almost endless men, which is not indeed a bad thing, on the whole.

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But this immense system of communications

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needs all manner of men,

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all manner of skills and crafts and backroom techniques.

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The days are done when the lines were shared among many companies -

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the great Indian Peninsula, the Madras Company,

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the Bombay, Baroda and Central India,

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the Jamnagar-Dwarka and dozens more.

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Indian railways belong to India now.

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An awful lot of it still depends on that good old fossil fuel, coal.

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And a good thing, too,

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since India has quite a lot of coal and not much oil.

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And coal is comparatively cheap and oil is ferociously dear.

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In consequence, however,

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a good deal of this loose coal gets itself nicked,

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as indeed do most movable and stealable assets of the railways,

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sometime or another.

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Therefore, someone has to keep a pretty close eye on the scene.

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And before you triumphantly interrupt,

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let us agree that this scene was set up.

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It was enacted as, shall we say,

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a training exercise for the railway police.

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MIKE SATOW: The great advantage of the steam engine

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is that it is very cheap to build, it's very reliable

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and it can be maintained by more or less anyone.

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The steam locomotive is a labour-intensive machine,

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compared with the diesel or the electric.

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But on the other hand, labour is available in India

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and is very well versed in maintaining the steam engine.

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NARRATOR: They have, of course, to go to training schools

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to learn the complications of the modern systems.

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Any indication on the signal post.

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Now, sometimes, this signal becomes defective.

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That time, the driver or the motorman is authorised

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by the station master to pass that signal by a written authority,

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which, on our Western Railway, is prescribed on form TA T8B.

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Second signal, under this system of working,

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is semi-automatic stop signal.

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NARRATOR: Howrah, in Calcutta,

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is the biggest passenger station in all India.

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Just a glance at Howrah shows how much of India's economy

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relies on the rail - not just the passengers,

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but all the other businesses who depend on the station.

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The taxis, the coaches.

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The rickshaws...

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..and the porters -

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1,800 of them in Howrah alone, unpaid and living on baksheesh.

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But still it's the ironmongery of this great business

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that absorbs Mike Satow.

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The locomotives, their hisses and snorts to be recorded here

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and recollected in tranquillity.

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One of the prototype WD class, built by Baldwin,

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of which there are seven left.

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Faizabad. Number 7208.

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RECORDING: 'Comes into INDISTINCT Cantonment Station.

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'And this one happens to be drawing behind it

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'one of the standard tenders...'

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TRAIN WHISTLE DROWNS OUT VOICE

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NARRATOR: Udaipur was once a princely state of great prestige and renown.

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The Lake Palace is now a tourist hotel of equally great

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prestige and renown, perhaps the loveliest in India.

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There in the middle of the Pichola Lake in an unspoiled town

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with the dhobi ghats coming down to the water's edge,

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you would think you had everything.

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But Mike Satow dreams only of trains.

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MIKE SATOW: Ron Kumar, the curator of the museum,

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had only recently been appointed and there was much to show him.

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You can't learn everything by just looking into dusty files.

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I took him around with me on several visits.

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One of the more exciting ones, I think, from his point of view,

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was the monorail at Patiala.

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There's the engine shed and the track coming in here

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and another track over there.

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Here's the remains of one of the passenger coaches.

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And here is Colonel Bowles' saloon,

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with some of the original paintwork and lining on it,

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so we can get all that.

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And then up the front here, we've got the engines.

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Let's go and have a look at those for a start.

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This one's very good, but, unfortunately,

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the boiler's missing off this one and I can't find it anywhere at all.

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In splendid condition, you know,

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because these things haven't worked for 47 years.

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We've even got the original lettering on the side of these things.

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What is PSMT?

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It's the Patiala State Monorail Trainway.

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What is the history of this monorail?

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It was built in 1907 for the maharajah by Colonel Bowles.

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It ran for 20 years.

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It came into this engine shed and never ran again.

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All that's happened is the rails have been buried by wind-borne dust,

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trees have grown up around the track over there between two wagons.

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But, apart from that, the climate is so good,

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that everything has been preserved very well indeed.

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The principle of this monorail was for temporary light railways

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for building factories,

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moving materials about on construction sites.

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And they were never in one place for more than about one month.

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And it didn't really matter what the condition of the ground was like.

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It only had the one rail under the centre

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and the weight was about 90% on the rail, 10%...

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This wheel which ran on the road to steady it,

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but after 20 years going over the same track,

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it got into a fair amount of difficulty

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because of the grooves worn by the iron wheel here.

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Did they have such systems in any other countries?

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Not this system.

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This system was only used in India.

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These engines themselves came from Berlin. They're on a standard couple.

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The main thing now is, having found it,

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we've got an opportunity of saving it.

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I don't mind how long it takes to get it put back into working order,

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the important thing is that anything as historic as this

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just should not be cut up and sold for scrap.

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But if we can get this thing to Delhi, lay a bit of this track,

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because there obviously is still plenty of track in the yard here,

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if we could do that, this would be an absolute winner, it really would.

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NARRATOR: Indians are great travellers within their own land.

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Some of them, you'd think they almost lived on trains.

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The vast bulk of them travel hard, third class,

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for hours and hours and days and days.

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INDISTINCT CONVERSATION THROUGHOUT

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Patience. Patience is the thing

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and no-one has more of that than the Indians.

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We shall arrive sometime, somewhere. We always do.

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STATION HUBBUB

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An Indian railway station is more than a stopping place.

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It is, in fact, a way of life.

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Indian people don't GO to railway stations,

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they inhabit them, sometimes literally so.

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The station is a social centre, a nexus of life,

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a bazaar, an island of activity in the midst of 800,000 villages,

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where you can come by almost anything you want,

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from an orange to a bangle.

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INDISTINCT CONVERSATION

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It may be a couple of days, or three, before your train is due,

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so what can be the hurry?

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In the meantime, on the station,

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one plays, waits...

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lives, waits some more while time slips by,

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washes, eats, sleeps, reflects on eternity.

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Above all, waits.

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WOMAN SINGS INDIAN SONG

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PIG SQUEALS

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Even on the track, there are pickings to be made.

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Even cinders are not without value in a poor country.

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And Indian railway values and economics

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are not to be judged by Western standards.

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Of course, there are hundreds and thousands

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of ticketless travellers every day.

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The railways tolerate them. What else could they do?

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Benares, on the Ganges, is the holiest place

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on the holiest river for all pious Hindus.

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At sunrise, it is a place for the cleansing of the soul.

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Yet this peculiarly sacred place

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is one of the major centres of the Indian railways.

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Most of the pilgrims come to Benares by train, after all,

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from all over India to this especially hallowed riverside

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where one washes away one's spiritual impurities in the Ganges...

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though perhaps acquiring a few physical ones in the process.

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TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS

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And the tireless Mike Satow is still at work,

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still busy on the enshrining of the great Indian railway system

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on film, tape and memory.

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And coaxing the powers that be not to forget

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what the railways were all about.

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VOICE DROWNED OUT BY TRAIN

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TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS

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MIKE SATOW: All over India, one finds

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amongst the great family of railwaymen

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the generosity and kindness

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which has been so much a tradition of railwaymen.

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You find drivers who will invite you onto their footplate

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and, quite frequently,

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extend that hospitality beyond that of the footplate

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and even into their own homes.

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How do you do? Namaste.

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- Here is the eldest son. - Eldest son.

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HE INTRODUCES THE FAMILY

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- Please now take your seat. - Thank you very much.

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Thank you.

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HE READS IN NATIVE LANGUAGE

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We also respect to our guest, Mr Michael.

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This is the way and significance that you have with us.

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- Namaskar. - Namaskar.

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Sit down, please.

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- Your family are coming, too? - Yes.

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You come and sit down here, right? That's fine.

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- Please, please. - Now, did...

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Did Mrs Sharma make these?

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Oh, yes. You should start all these things.

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I enjoy this food.

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It is very, very kind of you to ask me to this,

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this festival, because I've never been inside a family house

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during a Diwali festival before.

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And this is really the Hindu New Year?

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Yes, new Hindu year. So everything we start today.

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Yes.

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NARRATOR: Diwali is, in fact, the autumn festival of lights,

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when every Hindu home is aglow in honour of the coronation of Rama,

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the God King, or the King God -

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who could possibly know after 2,000 years?

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It's dedicated to Lakshmi, goddess of prosperity,

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so every little lamp and light is auspicious

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for both this world and the next.

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FIREWORKS DROWN OUT VOICES

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Now we really take to the hills.

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This is what the true railway buffs all wait for -

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the famous Darjeeling Himalaya Railway.

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TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS

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This is the spectacular little toy train with its 2ft gauge,

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scrambling up the mountains on gradients sometimes 1 in 20,

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chasing its own tail in extraordinary loops and curlicues.

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A single-line track with all the down trains going one after the other

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and then all the up trains going up.

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TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS

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Sometimes the track is too steep even to go in loops,

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so the train has to reverse itself onto a new level,

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while the one five minutes behind busily pursues it.

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CHEERING

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TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS

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It takes eight hours to do its 54 miles

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and it isn't always quicker by rail,

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not when you can hop off at one side of the loop

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and hop back again on the other.

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You learn these techniques only through experience.

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TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS

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At the little hill town of Kurseong, the little hill train

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runs smack down the middle of the main street.

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This is road-rail integration of the closest kind.

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For a while, the train is a tram.

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WHISTLE BLOWS

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For all little hill towns, the train is an event, an occasion.

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It is the train that links these remote places with everywhere else.

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TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS

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This is quite particular.

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For Mike Satow, a special little train as befits a specialist.

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An observation coach for the number-one connoisseur

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of all Indian trains and the Himalayan toy train in particular.

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How many of the B-class engines are still working?

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- All 25 of them are. - 25. All working.

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And, on line, we have 16 of them.

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TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS

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Every so often, of course, some disaster strikes this railway.

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The monsoon washes away large sections of the track.

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And every time this happens, those of us who love it

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feel this must be the final death knell of the railway,

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which, after all, is losing money

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to the extent of 75% of its operating costs.

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But there are strong arguments in keeping it alive.

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First of all, if it were closed,

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2,000, 2,500 people would be without a job

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in an area which certainly can't provide alternative employment.

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But even on the emotional side, on a more emotional side,

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as seen by the railway enthusiast,

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this is surely one of the most famous,

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one of the best known of these hill railways.

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I don't think anybody can fail to be moved by the excitement

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of the toy railway, as it's called, up to Darjeeling.

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It's always known in a most friendly fashion as the toy railway.

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And for 54 miles, this exciting little railway plods uphill,

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over the top at Ghum, right on top of the world.

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Because when you come through Ghum

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and into the famous double loop at Batasia,

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you get your first glimpse of the snow

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and Kanchenjunga looming behind Darjeeling,

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which, at that point, lies about 600ft below you.

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NARRATOR: Now, the downward coasting ride towards Darjeeling.

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Darjeeling, one of the famous hill stations of the high North-East,

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squashed in at 7,000ft between Sikkim and Nepal,

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almost within the shadow of Everest.

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A great resort for the sahibs in their heyday

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and the rich tea planters from Assam.

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Now, Darjeeling is a very cosmopolitan place indeed,

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with its Nepalese, Lepchas, Sikkimese, Bengalis,

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all the high-ground people of the edge of India.

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And now, of course, especially the refugee colonies from Tibet,

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the society that insists on retaining its curious identity.

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THEY SING

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BELLS JANGLE

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It is possible to find parts of India

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that aren't within a bullock cart's ride of a railway line,

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but it isn't easy.

0:46:060:46:07

PHONE RINGS

0:46:110:46:13

Hello.

0:46:130:46:15

HE SPEAKS IN HIS OWN LANGUAGE

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India is so big, so various.

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15 recognised languages and uncountable dialects,

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which could well have been a great Balkanised confusion

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had the railways not, in their long, lumbering way, united it.

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Wherever you are in India,

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when the train comes, everything stops for the train.

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HUBBUB

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And when the train has gone, India takes over again.

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It isn't very beautiful, really.

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But it IS beautiful.

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And because it's part of life, it isn't immortal.

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This will go, one day,

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unless Mike Satow and his friends succeed

0:48:360:48:39

and insist that it shall not go,

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or at least not go unrecorded and unsung.

0:48:410:48:45

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