Steaming in The fight for Darjeeling's cliff top train

‘Darjeeling ko san o rail, hirna lai abo tyari cha / Guard le shuna bhai siti bajayo” (Darjeeling’s dainty train is all set to chug off / Oh, listen to the guard blowing the whistle): these lines are familiar to generations of children in Darjeeling.

- Amitava Banerjee

The train in the Nepali nursery rhyme is the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway and the rhyme depicts the close ties between the “Queen of the Hills” and local people.

However, that relationship has become strained after the Indian government decided to hand over the running of the DHR – listed by Unesco as a world heritage site – and oversight of the land adjoining the stations to a private company. Residents fear eviction s for people who have lived alongside the railway lines for generations, their small businesses replaced by shopping centres and hotels , while railway workers fear jobs will be axed. The DHR administration has already started downsizing, and employees who retire are not being replaced.