The Emphatic Steam of Darjeeling with Meter Gauge & Broad Gauge Flavors

This cute little train descends from the Batasia loop to surge ahead seamlessly towards Darjeeling. This service has one First Class coach and 1 Second class while the Joyride has both First Class coaches (Trayambak Ojha)

And the train finally halts at the water filling point. Seen here in a more bulky look (Trayambak Ojha)

After another round of inspection and watering the train starts its last small leg towards Darjeeling (Trayambak Ojha)

The train finally arrives at Darjeeling as it is coupled to some more coaches and and performs some shunting jobs while the days ends at the Valley (Trayambak Ojha)

After shunting the loco comes back to it's shed along with it's sibling for another round of check ups (Trayambak Ojha)

A solitary Reaper- Resting in the shed clearing exhausts (Trayambak Ojha)

The day has not yet ended for the shed staff as they prepare another loco for the next day's duty as per their loco rotation policy (Trayambak Ojha)

The rear of the Locos are lit up by passing traffic as the staff are doing their job in full flow (Trayambak Ojha)

Day-2-After so much fog the previous day we were very excited seeing this from our Hotel Rooms. Finally we might capture the Steam train in the backdrop of Kanchenjunga (Trayambak Ojha)

Due to poor patronage the morning joyride service to Ghoom and back had been cancelled but the day had started early for the shed staff as even the spectacular Kanchejunga view does not distract them from performing shunting jobs (Trayambak Ojha)

The loco reverses and attaches itself to a rather long rake of 6 coaches but still with a full throttle it was effortless in maneuvering them as the clouds had started to play hide and seek with the Mountains of Kanchenjunga (Trayambak Ojha)

A full view of the Darjeeling steam shed. Four were visible here 2 working at Darjeeling station and a couple were at Kurseong (Trayambak Ojha)

The train to Kurseong after a brief halt at Ghoom departs for Kurseong (Trayambak Ojha)

The crew had become used to our presence and were enjoying while the train negotiates a frail viaduct. Our ride is also resting (Trayambak Ojha)

As fog seems to thicken the steam loco crosses a small Buddhist garden through a waterfall (Trayambak Ojha)

As the tran nears Kurseong, at Tung through this large Monastry heavy rains start to pour down but shooting in rains has a pleasure of it's own even if it meant risking the equipment. (Trayambak Ojha)

Crossing the small town of Tung the train goes down below the level of the parallel road and faces the valley (Trayambak Ojha)

We arrive at Kurseong and straight away head to the Steam loco shed which seemed safer to capture images since the Kurseong station had a battery of RPF & Armymen (Trayambak Ojha)

We had our lunch and then we started our work again as the train back to Darjeeling from Kurseong starts at 15:00 hrs through the Kurseong market (Trayambak Ojha)

Making echos through the valley and negotiating numerous curves the train to Darjeeling travels merrily (Trayambak Ojha)

A steam service from Kurseong to Darjeeling climbs up the hills chugs to its full effort emitting a thick cloud of steam on a day when Diesels were on repairs. Thanks to the efforts put in to capture the hill for this a leech sucked quite some blood out o

The fog is relentless and refuses to leave the entire Darjeeling valley this last service from Kurseong to Darjeeling hauled by a steam locomotive makes it's way puffing up the hills as we decided to call it a day in the hills keeping in mind we had a tra

A shot when my heart was pounding faster than a Rajdhani so much that it even skipped beats. At a RPF/GRP/Army/Police infested New Jalpaiguri Railway station a solitary rebuilt Malda Town WDM3A patiently waits for it's next duty (Trayambak Ojha)