Train services resume on Kalka-Shimla line, speed reduced

Train services resumed on the Kalka-Shimla railway line after a chartered toy train carrying a group of 37 foreigners derailed on Saturday killing two Britons, officials said on Sunday. The speed of the trains on this section has been reduced to lessen possibility of accidents in future.

Traffic on the world heritage rail line was disrupted after the train derailed near Kalka in Haryana on Saturday.

"Traffic on the Kalka-Shimla track was restored last night (Saturday). 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 take more than one-and-half hours to cover the distance," an official at the Shimla railway station told IANS.

He said all trains plying between Kalka in Haryana and the Himachal Pradesh capital 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) Zahur Zaidi told IANS over phone.

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.

Five trains run to and from daily on the world heritage Kalka-Shimla rail line. Normally a train takes five hours to complete the journey between Kalka and Shimla.

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.