Before 1878 the journey from Calcutta to Darjeeling took five or six days by train, river steamer, bullock cart and palanquin. That year Siliguri was joined to Calcutta by a metre-gauge railway, and the trip shrank to about two days. From Siliguri, horse-drawn tongas carried travellers up the Hill Cart Road.
Franklin Prestage, an agent of the Eastern Bengal Railway, proposed a steam tramway from Siliguri up to Darjeeling. Work began in 1879. By March 1880 the track had reached Tindharia, and the line from Siliguri to Kurseong opened that August. Trains reached Darjeeling on 4 July 1881, on a track only 2 ft wide.
Siliguri Town station was the original southern end of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway. In 1962 the line was extended by about 6 km to the new broad-gauge junction at New Jalpaiguri, and the engine sheds moved there. Today the toy train still starts from NJP, and a restored steam engine stands on a plinth outside Siliguri Junction.
In 1999 UNESCO listed the railway as a World Heritage Site. So the city most travellers see only from a jeep window is, in fact, where one of the world's best-known mountain railways starts its 88 km climb. Look for the narrow-gauge track beside Hill Cart Road as you leave the city; the train still shares the road with jeeps and trucks for long stretches on the way up.
Sources
Legends are retold differently from village to village. Where a story is told locally rather than written down, we say so.
