Everyone's cup of tea: Darjeeling's most beloved locomotive
A look at Darjeeling Himalayan Railway's most beautiful and popular locomotive.
By National Rail Museum
National Rail Museum
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Right along the Museum railway track, is one of the prettiest stops of the place - Darjeeling Himalayan Railways' locomotive B-777.
Darjeeling Himalayan Railway's B777National Rail Museum
Considered to be one of the most beautiful locomotive designs to ever run on the Indian Railway, B-777 has been a favourite amongst rail modellers and all other railway enthusiasts. The locomotive is one of the first lot of B-class steam locomotives used on the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway. After being rebuilt once at the Tindharia Workshop-Darjeeling in 1917, it was finally withdrawn from service after 76 years, in 1957.
This two feet narrow gauge locomotive was manufactured by Sharp, Stewart & Co. at the Atlas Works in Glasgow, U.K, and put in service in the year 1881.
Being one of the tiniest locomotives, it had an overall weight of just 16 ton and worked very well on curvatures, making it ideal for the hilly areas of Darjeeling.
Locomotive B 777 of the DHR on another stamp issued on 16th April 1993Heritage Directorate, Indian Railways
Along with being replicated many times by rail modellers across the world, B-777 was also bestowed the philatelic honour and given its own stamp in the year 1993.
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Maximum adhesion needs to be maintained between the track and train due to the steep gradient and short curvatures of the Darjeeling track.
To maintain this on the B-777, one man always had to stand on the footboard on the side of the sandbox and manually throw sand on the track, for added friction.
Darjeeling Himalayan Railway's B777National Rail Museum
B-777 had a wheel arrangement of 0-4-0, which signifies the number of pilot wheels-driving wheels-trailing wheels respectively.
It is a well and saddle tank locomotive, which means that it had two tanks for water storage, the 'well' tank, common in all the locomotives and an additional saddle shaped tank on top of the boiler.
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Take a virtual walk around DHR's B-777 and zoom in on the design details of its compact shape and size.
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