Interesting Overseas Post

Hello everybody,

a few weeks ago I had the chance to visit the remaining steam activities on
the meter gauge lines around Mirpur Khas in the South-Eastern parts of
Pakistan.
Steam still continues but the activity is on a very low level - the number
of engines required to run the remaining services vary from 1 to 4. Luckily
the shed foreman manages it to keep 5 engines running - but had to buy
spare parts for his steam engines from a scrap dealer who got them from the
now closed steam loco repairshop at Lahore.
The shed´s running board speaks a clear language:
the tracked mileage for September 1996: 40.028, for September 97: 12.636
and for September 98: only 11.547!

While the line to Khokhropar sees a well patronized daily return service
(train no MG5/6) plus an additional train (MG14/15) on Mondays only up to
Pithoro, do the other once-a-week-services to Nawabshah (MG21/22 Sunday)
and on the Loop-line (MG14/15 Monday) run as Ghost trains with more staff
than passengers.
The reason for the continued service to Khokhropar is the massive presence
of the national army forces in this boarder region to India. All transports
of heavy material have to be done either by air or by rail because some of
the road bridges are too weak to carry the heavy load vehicles. Amazingly
the army sponsors new river bridges for the rail! The next step should be
that the army sponsors new steam locomotives as well because as they do not
talk to Indian people on the other side of this dangerous boarder they
don´t know that there are a lot of jobless Indian meter gauge diesel
available...

Because of the army presence in this area it is highly recommended not to
go there without an official permit and the guidance by an army officer.
Although I followed all rules even I (with an railway and army official)
had massive problems at Pithoro junction where it needed a lot of phone
calls between "my" army officer and the army headquarter to prevent another
army guy to arrest all three "intruders".

Some details for number-fans:

serviceable: MS63, YE722, YD520, YD522, SP138

dumped: YD523, YD524, SP127, MS65, YE728

under repair: YE732

On the train back to Karachi I met a driver from the Karachi diesel shed
who proudly told me that a German engineer arrived a week ago who did the
fine-tuning of the new Adtranz diesel locomotives which have been bought by
the Pakistan Railways recently (funded by a Japanese world bank
contribution). Of course I was invited to visit the shed and to tell
everybody that these new diesels are the best the Pakistan Railways could
get.
During our conversation the engineer told me: "I really don´t know what
those people will do with these machines if an electronic breakdown occurs
- there is nobody available here to repair the high-tech electronic parts
of these locomotives. And they won´t have the money to get spare parts from
abroad".

I should have told them that SLM would be able to offer something more
exciting...

Cheers,
Peter-H. Patt
garratt@compuserve.com

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