Small and beautiful
GIRISH BABU P.P.
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The Museum of Miniature Railways has a fully functional station yard.
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Small, they say, is beautiful. But miniatures can be spellbinding as you will find out when you visit the Joshi Museum of Miniature Railways in Kothrud, Pune.
The brainchild of B.S. Joshi, an engineer by profession, it is the only one of its kind in the country.
The museum is a two-storey building and was opened to the public on April 1, 1998.
We walked into the museum, as the green light flashed on the railway traffic signal. Displayed before us was a miniature city on a circular structure of 12 foot or so. Rail lines meandered through the city.
A fully functional station yard with as many as six platforms, three main lines, an announcement system, plenty of siding, goods loading facilities, turn-table cranes and so on were on show. Perched on the rails were miniatures of all sorts of trains.
There were steam trains billowing smoke, diesel engines, high speed inter-city express, circular ground trains, the local shuttleright before us.
The show opened and the city was decked in lights. The trains came alive. They began chugging along their lines, evoking the curiosity of a rail journey. Off they went through the ghats and tunnels sending us into raptures.
City lights
It was the city’s turn to show its charms. A circus was in the city. There was a merry-go-round, a roller-coaster, a swimming pool with people swimming, a drive-in theatre.
As the city lights went off one after another, the night sky with stars and planets appeared — the very sky as was visible on April 16, 1853 — the day on which the first train ran in India. the entire city came alive, unravelling its beauty and had us in its power.
For those elated by the functioning of the city and the railways, there is a bobby station for rail models on the ground floor where scale models of even international brands could be obtained.
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