Mountain route
Nilgiri Mountain Railway
Mettupalayam → Ooty · India
Nilgiri Mountain Railway in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 46 km
- Fastest time
- 4 h 50 min
- Average speed
- 10 km/h
- Top speed
- 30 km/h
- Operator
- Indian Railways (Southern Railway)
- Train
- X-class steam rack loco
- Countries
- India
- In service since
- 1899
- Runs
- 1× daily each way, extra in peak season
- Highest point
- 2,203 m
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
India’s only rack railway: X-class steam pushes the blue coaches up 1-in-12 grades from palm plains to Ooty’s tea hills; UNESCO-listed in 2005.
At Kallar the Abt rack begins and the engine drops to the rear for the long shove up through jungle, past waterfalls and halts patrolled by macaques. Above Coonoor the mood softens as diesel replaces steam for the run across eucalyptus downs to Udagamandalam, 2,203 m up in the Blue Mountains. Covering its 46 km in nearly five hours, this is one of Asia’s slowest railways, and among its most stubbornly loved.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 1332011 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within under 25 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 3 m from it
- The operator publishes this line's timetable: the railway’s own site — a place to look it up, not a check of our drawing
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Kallar — the rack begins
- Adderley and Hillgrove forest halts
- Coonoor engine change
- Wellington and Ketti valley
- Ooty at 2,203 m
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