Iron - not so old

The locomotive at the southern end of this building looks much bigger than its counterpart at the other end. However, this one does not seem to have the rambling history of the other one and seems to have served on just one sector, running between Bangalore and Bangarpet for all the 25 years it was in service. The Bangarpet-Bangalore line was put in place, in stages, by the Maharaja of Mysore as far back as 1918. Yelahanka, 16 km from Bangalore was at that time the homing shed for the locomotives working on this line.

This ZP-4 locomotive, manufactured by the Nippon Sharyo Seizo Kaisha in 1950 entered service on the Bangarpet-Bangalore line only in 1955. In 1980, the Bangalore-Yelahanka line was dismantled for gauge conversion. With that, this locomotive saw the end of its service and it was brought over to Madras, to be plinthed in front of the Southern Railway headquarters.