Rail museum offers ride on India's first monorail every week

Visitors at the National Rail Museum can now take a historical train ride on the country's first monorail -- Patiala State Monorail Tramway (PSMT) -- every Thursday, Railways officials said.

According to Railways Ministry officials, the first monorail is ready to spew steam and smoke again.

The 108-year-old monorail PSMT4, which was used by Maharaja of Patiala Bhupinder Singh, was brought to the NRM during the 1970s. Of the three other locomotives built by the German company, one is exhibited at a workshop in Amritsar and the other two have been lost.

"The monorail with a locomotive and a saloon of the erstwhile PSMT will do a 15-minute loop run of the museum," Amit Kumar, Director of the NRM, told IANS.

He also said that the NRM will charge Rs 500 per trip.

"We have decided to run four trips of the train in the museum," he said, adding that the trips would be organised between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. every Thursday.

According to the Ministry officials, the Patiala monorail was conceived in the early 1900s and was built under the supervision of the state's Chief Engineer Colonel C.W. Bowles.

The monorail at that time ran on two routes in the princely state of Patiala between 1907 and 1927.

The total distance covered by PSMT was 80 km. It was run on two unconnected lines -- one ran 24 km from Sirhind to Morinda and the other line ran 56 km from Patiala to Sunam.

--IANS

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