India: Running out of Steam (part 2) - The Black Beauty Contest

These are excerpts from National Geographic's "The Great Indian Railway"(1995), probably the best documentary ever on the Indian Railways. As a young boy, I used to travel to Grandma's place by the Howrah Mail from Madras. In 1989, on one such trip, My dad pointed out to a gigantic engine puffing smoke in the shed at Madras central as our train was leaving and said: "Manu, look, that's a steam engine". I forgot about steam engines later. In 1999(10 years later), I watched the National Geographic's special screening of this documentary on TV. I remembered my encounter with the puffing beasts in 1989. I couldn't stop crying by the end of this documentary. Starting in the early 80's the Steam engines of the Indian Railways have been slowly phased out of all the main lines in favor of Electric and Diesel locomotives due to economic pressures. By the turn of the 90's, it had become a rare sight to see a Steam-driven train. You can buy the DVD or VHS of this 115 minute documentary on nationalgeographic.com. It costs $15 including US local postage.

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[nprakashprasad]

Hi do you have the entire vedio of this program. I can purchase the VHS but donot have a vhs player with me . So if you have the entire vedio i request youto please share with me

[binoyrakesh]

I do have the entire full length documentary. I can't upload the whole thing, cos even this is actually a breach of copyroght laws.

I suggest you buy the dvd version. Do you live in the US? If youre in India, i would suggest dowloading it on torrents(it is illegal, but it turns out that buying it from India is too expensive.).

These four videos that I uploaded cover almost 60% of the documentary.

[binoyrakesh]

Just do a google search for "DVD he great Indian Railway". You should find it.

If you wanna watch the full thing online (low quality), someone has uploaded the full documentary on Vide0 .g00gle . c0m

If you are in India, just download a torrent application like VUZE, search for "the great Indian Railway" and wait for a day or two.

[ABHAY1475]

This is my 50 TH watch. Still enjoy it.

[390904902]

Thanks for this. I've never seen anything like a black beauty contest! (In fact, it has given me an idea for a set of steampunk novels I'm writing.)

[nprakashprasad]

A nice vedio friend. I also used to watch this program a lot.