Traffic restored on Kalka-Shimla rail line

Train services resumed on the Kalka-Shimla railway line after a chartered special toy train carrying a group of 37 foreigners derailed, killing two Britons, officials said on Sunday.

The traffic on the world heritage rail line had been disrupted after the train derailed near Kalka in Haryana on Saturday.

"The traffic on the Kalka-Shimla track was restored last night. As a precaution, the speed of the trains on this section has been reduced. So the to and fro trains between Kalka and Shimla will will take more than one and a half hour to cover the distance," an official at the Shimla railway station told IANS.

He added that all trains plying between Kalka in Haryana and Shimla, the capital of Himachal Pradesh, were running on schedule.

Two Britons were killed and seven injured when two coaches of the train derailed.

The dead were identified as two women, Loraine Toner and Joan Nickolas, both 60, Inspector General of Police (Railway) Zahoor Zaidi told IANS over the telephone.

The injured were admitted to Max Super Specialty Hospital in Punjab's Mohali town near Chandigarh, some 30 km from the accident spot.

Over-speeding at a curve was the cause of the accident, one of the survivors told police.

The Kalka-Shimla rail track was built by the British in 1903 to ferry Europeans to and from this hill town, the erstwhile summer capital of British India.

It was chosen by Unesco as a world heritage site in 2008.