Taken from The Himalayan Queen
The station house at Koti. The man on the platform is the signalman at Koti; each station has its own dedicated staff to ensure the trains run safely and on time. Communication up and down the railway is still made using the original system installed in 1903, and the drivers pass tokens to the station master at each stop to record that the train arrived safely, as they have since the railway opened. Although India has adopted new technologies with a voracious appetite, respect and nostalgia for more traditional methods abounds everywhere. Everywhere I encountered these legacies they were maintained with the utmost care and attention. There is a great deal of pride in these antiquated systems...
more... and in the fact that they are functional today - thanks in no question to the dedication of the engineers who have attended to them over the decades.
by mllejordan
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