Transport in Darjeeling

[1] The toy train leaves from Siliguri, a station located a few kilometres from New Jalpaiguri, and takes about 8 hours to reach Darjeeling through the meandering mountain railway line.

The railway has long been viewed with affection and enthusiasm by travellers to the region, and the Earl of Ronaldshay gave the following description of a journey in the early 1920s: "Siliguri is palpably a place of meeting.[.....]

]One steps into a railway carriage which might easily be mistaken for a toy, and the whimsical idea seizes hold of one that one has accidentally stumbled into Lilliput.

No special mechanical device such as a rack is employed - unless, indeed, one can so describe the squat and stolid hill-man who sits perched over the forward buffers of the engine and scatters sand on the rails when the wheels of the engine lose their grip of the metals and race, with the noise of a giant spring running down when the control has been removed.

Sometimes we cross our own track after completing the circuit of a cone, at others we zigzag backwards and forwards; but always we climb at a steady gradient - so steady that if one embarks in a trolley at Ghum, the highest point on the line, the initial push supplies all the energy necessary to carry one to the bottom.

The Operation of Darjeeling Himalayan Railways between Siliguri and Kurseong was temporarily suspended following a Landslide at Tindharia between 2010 and 2015.

Four wheel drives are the most popular means of transport, as they can easily navigate the steep slopes in the region.