A charming By-the-Way Railway

A little known, unsung charmer leaves Shimoga every morning except Sundays, and takes three hours through eight little stations to cover 75 km of the Western Ghats. Through hill and dale, often under green canopy of trees, it arrives at a one hundred year old railway station known as Talguppa.

I had boarded the Guntakal passenger one evening from Bangalore, to go northward to Shimoga, arriving there at the crack of dawn, Shimoga, a modest district headquarters town, has only one platform. But on one side, a narrow track veers off with metre gauge rails meant for the two-bogied tiny train that would get my vote for cuteness.

The train can carry 57 passengers. It may be full at Shimoga at the start of the journey. Some board at the intermediate stations. Some board at the intermediate stations, some leave, but there is hardly anybody who goes all the way to Talguppa. The station master Nandakumar, with his cap on due to the arrival of the train. Says This is a railbus, and we have just this one coming every morning. It goes back to Shimoga in the evening. Ours is probably the only tracking this state that is still operational, on a single train system.

The story of Taluppa railway station and the tiny train form a part of the local lore. The British had built the station a century ago and, in 1939, it became part of the Mysore Railways. It was formally inaugurated by the maharaja of Mysore for the purpose of being a ferry line for the dam being constructed at Linganmakki as part of the log project.

The station was a busy nerve center. It was the only link in this region around Jog Falls, India’s highest, where the Sharavathi river falls in four cascades including the one called Raja with 253 m the longest drop. But Talguppa station is now ignored because quick bus services provide a more favoured link.

Passengers on this little train who go all the way to Talguppa are, usually like me, acqu sport enthusiasts. Off at Talguppa, they are headed along a 12 km trek towards Honnemaradu where The Adventurers, an NGO, runs their ecology establishment, Mangalore tiled roofs on their barn-like structures are full of Kayaks, boats, oars, rubber rafts, parasailing and other water sports equipment. The Sharavathi backwaters have several little islands and The Adventurers impart eco friendly training there: swimming lessons, rowing, camping, rafting. From all over India, the establishment draws men, women and children, most of whom use the tiny train up to Talguppa and then sling their rucksacks upon their backs to trek 12 km. They take care to avoid leeches that lurk along the path to Honnemaradu.

The little train has been in existence these past four years. Previous to that, a bigger train on this route needed 200 litres of diesel and always ran half full as people chose to go by road. Discontinued due to unprofitability the bigger one was replaced by the present train-bus. It used to run from Whitefield, a suburb of Bangalore, to Yelahanka, another suburb nearby, but the Whitefield gauge was converted and the two-bogie train-bus was without work.

It was again made operational with a built in diesel engine, and put on the Shimoga-Talguppa metre-guage track. It requires only 60 litres of diesel to run. Not even as tall as a bus, it passes through single track stations like Sagar, which is famed for skilled carvers that are a source of most of Karnataka handicraft emporiums wooden objects d’art.

After the arrival of this tiny train, Talguppa reverts to its character of a little hamlet in the evergreen forest of the Western Ghats where birds twitter, unseen insects go about foraging. And humans are a rarity.