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Darjeeling's toy train to be on world heritage list

Darjeeling's pride and the world's oldest running steam engine, the toy train, may find itself on the United Nation's world heritage list.

The train still snakes up and down the mountains and is the city's most endearing landmark.

The proposal to include the train, billed to figure as an enviable number 24 on the UN list, would be send to UNESCO's Delhi office by mid 1998, said Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council Principal Secretary Siddartha.

The idea was mooted after UNESCO India Director Prithviraj Perreira's visit to Darjeeling in December to attend a workshop and exhibition.

"The attention of the delegates was drawn towards the potential of the toy train as an object of world heritage," Siddhartha said.

Recently, efforts had been made by non governmental organisations like the National Museum of Mankind and Planner's Alliance for the Himalayas and Allied Region, in collaboration with the Darjeeling municipality and the West Bengal government, to revive the toy train's glorious past.

Efforts are also on to rope in the Darjeeling tea planters, who had expressed their willingness to refurbish and maintain the train's coaches. Experts of architecture, planning, ecology, conservation and urban growth who attended the workshop expressed the need to set up a Darjeeling hill area development authority for preserving the beauty of the place.

They also drew up a list of heritage buildings, cemeteries and other important landmarks that needed to be preserved.

"The need for a separate development authority for Darjeeling is now being increasingly felt, as without such an agency the Town and Country Planning Act cannot be implemented in the area effectively," said Siddhartha.

Town planners have also expressed the need to extend anti- earthquake protection for heritage buildings in Darjeeling.

UNI

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