The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway: from 1881 to UNESCO

By the 1870s Darjeeling was the summer seat of the Bengal government and the centre of a fast-growing tea industry. But getting there was slow. Travellers from Calcutta came north by rail and river crossing to the plains near Siliguri, then went up by tonga, pony or palanquin along the Hill Cart Road. Tea chests and stores came down and went up the same way, at high cost.

When the railway reached Siliguri in 1878, the obvious next step was a line up the hill. Franklin Prestage, an agent of the Eastern Bengal Railway, proposed a steam tramway following the Hill Cart Road, and in 1879 the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, Sir Ashley Eden, approved the scheme. The Darjeeling Steam Tramway Company was formed to build it, and work began that year.

The engineers chose a gauge of 2 feet, or 610 mm, narrow enough to take the tight curves of a mountain road. The line opened in stages: the first section from Siliguri in 1880, then on to Kurseong, and finally to Darjeeling, which it reached on 4 July 1881. The same year the company took the name it still carries, the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway Company.

The steepness of the climb was the main problem. In places the original gradients were too sharp for the locomotives of the day. The answer was two pieces of mountain engineering that make the line famous. A loop lets the track spiral round and pass over itself, gaining height in a small space. A reverse, often called a zigzag or Z-reverse, takes the train forward up one leg, then backwards up the next, and forward again, climbing a slope too steep for a single curve. Several loops and reverses were added or rebuilt over the following decades as traffic grew.

The small blue steam engines that most people picture when they think of the toy train are the B Class. The type first ran in 1889, and more were built over the following decades, mostly by Sharp, Stewart and Company of Glasgow and its successor, the North British Locomotive Company. They are 0-4-0 saddle tank engines, short enough for the tight curves, with a crew that traditionally included a man at the front who sprinkled sand on the rails for grip on wet and steep sections.

Several B Class engines are still in working order and are maintained at the railway's workshop at Tindharia, below Kurseong. Diesel engines handle most regular services now, but steam still pulls many of the joy rides between Darjeeling and Ghum, and a steam train at Batasia is the picture most visitors want to take home.

Ghum, at 2,258 m, is the highest station on the line and is often described as the highest railway station in India. Beyond it, the line drops about 200 m to Darjeeling, and the descent includes the Batasia Loop, which came into use in 1919. The loop makes a full circle around a garden, and today it holds a war memorial to Gorkha soldiers of the Indian Army, with Kangchenjunga behind it on clear mornings.

Ghum station also houses a small railway museum, with old photographs, signalling equipment, tickets and models. It is worth half an hour, and its opening hours change, so ask at the station or your hotel. The railway is celebrated each year in the hills, and our festival pages list current dates where known.

Walk the Hill Cart Road between Darjeeling and Ghum and you see how close the railway and the town live together. The track runs down the middle or edge of the road, past shopfronts, school gates and tea stalls, and children step aside as the train whistles through. In Kurseong the line passes through the town market itself. That closeness is part of what makes the railway feel alive rather than like a museum piece.

In the early twentieth century the company added two branch lines in the plains and foothills: one towards Kishanganj and one up the Teesta valley towards Kalimpong. Neither survives. The Teesta Valley line was badly damaged by floods and landslides in 1950 and never reopened, and the Kishanganj branch was absorbed into the main rail network.

In 1948, after Independence, the Government of India bought the railway and it became part of Indian Railways, today run under the Northeast Frontier Railway. Road traffic on the Hill Cart Road took away most of its freight and many passengers, and the line has also suffered from the region's steep geology. Landslides have closed sections for long periods more than once, including a major slip at Paglajhora in 2010 that cut the line below Kurseong for several years.

Popular culture helped keep the line in the public eye. The 1969 Hindi film Aradhana has one of the best-known song sequences shot on the railway, in which Rajesh Khanna, driving an open jeep on the road beside the track, sings to Sharmila Tagore on the train.

In 1999 UNESCO inscribed the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway on the World Heritage List. It was only the second railway to be listed, after the Semmering Railway in Austria the year before. UNESCO's reasons were that it is an outstanding example of a bold, ingenious engineering solution to running a railway through mountain terrain, and that it played a large part in the social and economic life of the region.

The listing was later extended to two other hill lines: the Nilgiri Mountain Railway in Tamil Nadu in 2005 and the Kalka–Shimla Railway in Himachal Pradesh in 2008. Together they are now listed as the Mountain Railways of India.

There are two ways to ride. The full journey from NJP or Siliguri to Darjeeling takes seven hours or more and is for railway enthusiasts with a free day. The joy ride from Darjeeling to Ghum and back via the Batasia Loop takes about two hours, with stops at Batasia and at Ghum for the museum, and suits almost everyone. Both are booked on IRCTC, and joy-ride seats in October and May sell out weeks ahead.

Fares for the joy ride have been roughly ₹1,000–1,600 per person, depending on steam or diesel and class, indicative 2026. Timetables, steam availability and monsoon suspensions all change, so check current status before you travel. Our 3-night toy train trip builds in a joy ride and a morning at Ghum.

• Book on IRCTC as soon as your dates are fixed
• Carry a warm layer; Ghum is colder and windier than Darjeeling
• Walk the Hill Cart Road beside the track in Darjeeling for free photos of passing trains