Scenic route
Kalka–Shimla Railway
Kalka → Shimla · India
Kalka–Shimla Railway in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 96 km
- Fastest time
- ≈ 5 h 30 min
- Average speed
- 17 km/h
- Top speed
- 25 km/h
- Operator
- Indian Railways
- Train
- Rail motor · Himalayan Queen
- Countries
- India
- In service since
- 1903
- Runs
- 4–5× daily each way
- Highest point
- 2,076 m
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
102 tunnels and 864 bridges to the Raj’s summer capital: a UNESCO line where the guard still waves flags.
Laid out so the colonial administration could haul itself to the hills each summer, the 762 mm line winds from 656 m at Kalka to 2,076 m on Shimla’s cedar ridge. The longest bore, Barog tunnel, carries the ghost story of the engineer whose two headings famously failed to meet, while the tiered stone gallery viaducts nearby could pass for Roman aqueducts. Ride the little Rail Motor with its glass front and the five-and-a-half-hour climb becomes the whole point of the trip.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 331109 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within 38 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 13 m from it
- Checked against the running timetable via Transitous: our line sits 0.9 km from the shape of 52457
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Koti gallery viaducts
- Barog tunnel
- Solan — brewery town of the hills
- Tara Devi ridge curve
- Shimla at 2,076 m
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