NMR short service in Ooty, Lovedale route soon in Tamil Nadu

CHENNAI: As part of the measures to boost tourist traffic on Nilgiri Mountain Railway (NMR), the Southern Railway is to launch soon a short train service for four km between Ooty and Lovedale for sight seeing.The daily NMR train starts from Mettupalayam at 7 am and reaches Udagamandalam at noon.  In the return direction, the train leaves Udagamandalam at 2 pm and arrives at Mettupalayam at 5.35 pm.
The train passes through Kallar, Hillgrove, Coonoor , Wellington , Aravankadu, Ketti and Lovedale stations.

“After reaching Udhagamandalam, the train will make a short trip to Lovedale. From there it will go back to Udagamandalam after 30 minutes of halt at Lovedale,” A K Kathpal, Principal Chief Mechanical Engineer, Southern Railway told Express.Officials said the special short services fares will be charged on a par with special heritage trains.Kathpal said they are awaiting steam locos from Golden Rock Workshop to launch the service. “The loco workshop had been directed to finish the Periodic overhauling of steam locos within three months. Once, we receive the additional locos, the short trip will be launched,” he said.

The short service would facilitate a large number of travellers and tourists who want to catch a  glimpse of The Nilgiri hills again after reaching Udhagamandalam. Similarly, tourists from Ooty who could not spend three hours in a train, but want to travel the scenic route, get down at  stations en-route and choose to return to Udhagamandalam by car. The short route service would attract such tourists. 

To provide an heritage appeal to NMR trains, the railways is planning to put back a coal-fired steam loco back in operation. “The coal fired steam loco, which is considered a heritage loco of NMR, will be put into service along with oil fired steam loco,” added the officer.