Landslides hit rail traffic on Kalka-Shimla track

(Photo: Getty Images)


Rail traffic on the Kalka-Shimla track — a world heritage site — was disrupted on Wednesday in Himachal Pradesh owing to landslides following rainfall, an official here said. Nobody was injured.

“Traffic on the rail line would be normalised soon. Work on clearing the muck and huge boulders that has completely blocked the tracks is on,” a senior railway official told IANS.

Landslides were also reported at several places near Koti town in Solan district, some 65 km from the state capital. However, no train has been cancelled so far.

Toy trains — as they are popularly called — run on the century-old Kalka-Shimla rail line. Each train has seven coaches and can accommodate nearly 200 passengers.

The 96-km-long narrow gauge railroad — originally built to ferry Europeans to Shimla, the then summer capital of British India — was chosen by the Unesco as a world heritage site in 2008.