Pakistan & India, 1993/1994
This gallery contains photographs of trains in Pakistan and India over the New Year period of 1993 - 1994.
The photographs were taken on an Enthusiast Holidays tour, organised and led by Vic Allen.
In Pakistan the tour group was accommodated in two carriages, a sleeping car and a dining car, which were attached to service trains to move around the country. These were then detached and stabled at the stations where we were to photograph the remaining steam trains. This was very convenient, especially for getting early morning photographs.
Photographs around Mirpur Khas - metre gauge.
Photographs at Samasata locomotive shed - broad gauge, CWD 2-8-2.
Pakistan
Map of Pakistan Railways, from Wikimedia Commons (By User:Adnanrail (Provided via OTRS) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]).
Kotri Junction and Mirpur Khas are in the south.
Samasata is east of centre, just south of Bahawalpur.
Malakwal is in the north, just north of Sargodha, and the Khyber Pass is in the north-west, west from Peshawar.
The origins of the railways in Pakistan and India were identical since they had both been part of the British-governed Raj up to partition and independence in 1948. Since then the railway operations of the two countries had slowly diverged. To the steam enthusiast Pakistan was exciting at this time since it was still operating old types of steam locomotive that had long ago been retired in India.
Photographs at Kotri Junction - broad gauge, GGS 2-8-0, SGS & SGC 0-6-0.
Photographs around Malakwal - broad gauge, SPS 4-4-0, SGS 0-6-0.
India
Photographs in the Khyber Pass - broad gauge, HGS 2-8-0.
Photographs at Jalandhar - broad gauge, WL 4-6-2.
Photographs at the Saraya Sugar Mills railway system - 2’6” gauge & metre gauge.
Photographs at Gorakhpur - metre gauge steam and broad gauge diesel.
Photographs at Samastipur - metre gauge steam and broad gauge diesel.
Photographs at Bareilly Junction and Bareilly City - metre gauge and broad gauge.
Photographs of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway - 2’6” gauge.
Photographs at the National Railway Museum, Delhi.
The tour group’s two carriages used for travel and accommodation in Pakistan were left at Lahore in Pakistan. After crossing the border into India normal service trains were used for travel, with overnight accommodation, if not in sleeping carriages while travelling, then in hotels.
After independence India built large numbers of a few standardised classes of modern steam locomotives and by now the old classes had been retired. However, dieselisation was very advanced, steam was being run down and was disappearing rapidly, especially on the broad gauge.
To see really ancient, ex-main line, Indian steam locomotives at work it was necessary to visit one of a couple of sugar mills, such as the Saraya Sugar Mills.
The photographs in these railway photograph galleries are available for use under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Attribution should include a link to www.nigeltout.com.