Traffic on Kalka-Shimla track hit owing to mudslide

Shimla, June 24

Rail traffic on the Kalka-Shimla track, a world heritage site, was disrupted on Saturday in Himachal Pradesh owing to mudslide following heavy rainfall, an official here said.

"Traffic on the rail line would be normalised soon. Work on clearing the muck that has blocked the tracks near Koti is on," a senior railway official told IANS.

Landslides were also reported at several places near Koti in Solan district, some 65 km from the state capital.

Toy trains, as they are popularly called, run on the century-old Kalka-Shimla rail line. Each train has seven coaches and can accommodate nearly 200 passengers.

The 96-km-long narrow gauge railroad, originally built to ferry Europeans to Shimla, the then summer capital of British India, was chosen by the Unesco as a world heritage site in 2008.