THE FAIRY QUEEN

Trains hold an enduring fascination for me. In the days of my childhood I used to ask my elders telling me stories of the trains they had boarded: the green ones, the red ones and the like. My obsession with having a plunge into the rich heritage of railway transport in India to divulge information about the ‘Rail of the Raj’ received an impetus, as the other evening I was going through a page dedicated to the foundation of two great railway companies: Great Indian Peninsular Railway (GIPR) and East Indian Railway (EIR) in 1853 to 1854 to construct and operate two experimental lines near Mumbai and Kolkata respectively. Importantly the first train in india had become operational on December 22, 1851 for localised hauling of canal construction materials in Roorkee. A year and a half later, on April 16, 1853, the first passenger train service was inaugurated between Bori Bunder in Mumbai and Thane, a distance of thirty four kilometers. It was then hauled by three locomotives: Sahib, Sindh and Sultan. Seen on the left is an image of Dapoorie-viaduct-Bombay bridge on the Mumbai-Thane route after it was completed in 1854 to link Bombay island with the mainland of Thane.

The ‘Fairy Queen’, a steam locomotive owned by East Indian Railway (EIR), holds a special place not only in the railway transport history of India but that of the entire world also, as the Guinness Book of Records certified it in 1998 to be the oldest locomotive still in regular operation. The 5 feet and 6 inches Indian gauge locomotive, built by Kitson, Thompson and Hewitson at Leeds in England in 1855, was placed in service by the E.I.R.company in Bengal, which gave it the fleet number ‘22’ when the engine reached Kolkata the same year. Initially used to haul light mail trains in Bengal, operating between Howrah and Raniganj, and troop trains during the Great Rising in 1857, it was later consigned to line construction duty in Bihar till 1909. The next thirty-four years it remained on a pedestal outside Howrah station. In 1943 the locomotive was placed in the Railway Zonal Training School at Chandausi in Uttar Pradesh. The ‘Fairy Queen’ was accorded heritage status in 1972 and restored as an exibit at the National Rail Museum in Delhi. After some repairment works done in 1997, the locomotive was ready to get back on the rails at the age of 88. But the engine was returned to full working order after a substantial rebuild in December, 2012 when some rare locomotive parts had been missing-the boiler, condenser, lubricator, and flow tubes-all those were irreplaceable parts of the engine. The Deputy Chief Mechanical Engineer at ‘Perambur Locotive Workshop’, Tamil Nadu stated they had received a dead body of the ‘Fairy Queen’, a piece of metal whose every removable parts had been removed, leaving only the metal shell. According to officials it could take atleast a year even if suppliers of the replacement parts could be found. It now runs between the Indian capital of New Delhi and Alwar,Rajasthan to haul a luxury train in order to boost tourism in the province mentioned, with its output of 130 horse-power, producing a top speed of 40 kilometers an hour.

A humorous narrative of the‘Fairy Queen’,that I have recently come to know about from an editor, refers to the time after the Second World War,when a rich merchant,who was transporting goods by rail, had his consignment stolen on the way. He approached the High Court at Kolkata seeking justice.To his satisfaction, the court passed a verdict ordering E.I.R.to pay him a compensation of twenty-thousand rupees.As the reluctant E.I.R.hummed and hawed complying with the forfeiture,the merchant consulted an advocate and according to his wise counsel he stuck the letter of formality on the‘Fairy Queen’ on a pedestal, misjudging or having failed to decide which one of the officials of E.I.R.he would hand the letter over to.The rail company, daunted it would stain their pride and dignity, capitulated his demand for compensation, but took decision to cease‘Fairy Queen’ being displayed at Howrah station and send it to Jamalpur. The repaired ‘Fairy Queen’, however, with its flamboyant decoration of glossy finish of vibrant paints whistles a Nineteenth century nostalgia across destinations, making it look the portrait of a passenger train steaming, set against a backdrop of bucolic charm.