The station 7 miles away from Arakkonam Jn is not Munnal but Minnal. Minnal is a small town 3 km away from the existing station (at the same location) - Anvardhikanpettai. Interestingly, this is shown as a block station way back in 1931, however now is a Halt station only. Chitteri and Mahendravadi on either sides of this station are now the block stations.

Posted by Aravind S on 2015 May 05 04:56:05 +0000

What a fantastic restoration effort. Hats off to all the 1200 workers and the chief who overlooked this herculean task. Feels heartening to see that so much interest is being taken to restore to the minutest detail possible. Great job Shubhabrata and team!

Posted by Pawan Koppa on 2015 Mar 03 10:06:37 +0000

I am overwhelmed and speechless with such encouraging response from you. Thanks a lot.

Shirish: We tried to maintain liveries from archival records, oldest available photos and in consultation with various railfans and historians across the globe. Our own Apurva, Poochi, Souro, Ashish, Samit, Dr Manning, David Churchill, George Woods and many more are few who worked in the backstage. You can compare few in http://www.irfca.org/gallery/Heritage/gwoodshh/preserved/


Milind: We loved to allow people to visit inside. But a practical problem preventing us from doing so, we cater about 800 visitors in week days and about 2000 in every weekend. A heartbreaking fact is everybody is not Railfan.

Subhabrata Chatterjee

Posted by Gallery Administrator on 2015 Feb 24 08:21:05 +0000

A great group of pictures. I do like the before and after views.
The restoration work is excellent and was much needed. Thanks to the many people involved

Posted by David Churchill on 2015 Feb 23 09:39:02 +0000

Great set of pictures.

Posted by Arzan Kotval on 2015 Feb 22 15:35:02 +0000

It's heartening to see what a dedicated team led by a well informed, heritage-aware Chief Restorer can achieve. I was overjoyed to see restoration to original liveries & interiors. Looking forward to visiting NRM, something we could not say for over ten years now!

Hope that when NRM's indoor displays are refurbished the infamous "jackfruit letter" by Okhil Ch Sen is removed. It's an utter disgrace that even IR has begun to believe that toilets were installed on IR carriages only after that letter, which may not even be authentic, was sent!

Congratulations & kudos to Subhabhrata & Team and to all the workshops involved on a task superbly done!

Posted by Mohan Bhuyan on 2015 Feb 19 08:01:31 +0000

Dear members: Thanks a lot for your encouraging comments.

Shirish:- Let me assure you that we have compromised in less than 5% cases in interior only. Every colour/designs/borders applied to the exhibits are based on either historical records or oldest available photographs. You can compare few with http://www.irfca.org/gallery/Heritage/gwoodshh/preserved/. Many IRFCA members like Poochi, Apruva, Souro, Samit, Dr Manning, David Churchill also contributed a lot in the backstage.

Milind: We love to give access to inside. But a practical problem restricts us in doing so. We cater approx 800 visitors a day in weekdays and 2000 in weekend and holidays, and a heartbroken fact is that everybody is not a railfan.

Posted by Subhabrata Chatterjee on 2015 Feb 19 04:46:52 +0000

Good work by the teams but I wonder whether they will give access to view the insides which remain locked out and one can hardly see anything from the glass window (which will with time become dirty). Hope they will maintain it properly as well.

Posted by Milind on 2015 Feb 19 03:35:25 +0000

Thanks for sharing. Good initiative, and nice to see contributions of zonal workshops are duly acknowledged.

Having said that, I felt that in many cases the renovation has been “overdone” by using bright colours and paint schemes – which has taken away the resemblance to what these machines would have looked like, and the “rustic” feel we normally associate with IR equipment of that era.

Posted by Shirish Paranjape on 2015 Feb 19 01:53:22 +0000

Nice set of pics. Must make another visit to the NRM. Thanks, Shubhoda.

Posted by Sridhar Joshi on 2015 Feb 18 05:06:38 +0000