Nilgiris steam locomotive to be new attraction at rail museum

Chennai: Visitors to the regional railway museum here will be welcomed at the entrance by a garden that will have the good old ‘steam locomotive’ that used to ply in the Nilgiris mountain.

Thanks to ICF officials and museum authorities, the X-class engine will be open to public from  September 27, the day ICF celebrates its diamond jubilee. “As a very few X-class model operating on the tracks with a modified steam engine in place, we have decided to keep it for public viewing,” said a senior curator of the railway museum at ICF.

The area around the space where the engine is placed is currently being spruced up to convert it into a park where visitors will have a walker’s path which would enable them to  have a closer view of the locomotive.

X class locomotives are a class of metre gauge 0-8-2T rack and pinion compound locomotives working on the Nilgiri  Mountain Railway. The last of the four oil-fired steam engines of
X Class 0-8-2T rack and pinion compound engine,  bearing road number X 37399, was rolled out on March 5, 2014, at the Central Workshop, Ponmalai, Tiruchirappalli. It is expected to join the fleet after trials on the rack railway.

The X-class locomotive used to ply on he 20-kilometre steep stretch between Coonoor and Kallar. The engine was bought to ICF campus in December last year. As part of ICF’s diamond jubilee celebrations, the organisation is also renovating a part of the museum with a new gallery that will contain artifacts, antiques and pictures that will depict the factory’s chronicles.