Chennai: Indian Railways is one of the largest rail networks in the world with nearly 1.20 lakh km of tracks spread across the country. It is 165 years old and it is natural that every station, every train, every long-serving employee has dozens of stories to tell. In this context, Indian Railways has collaborated with Google Arts & Culture to start an ongoing project called ‘Indian Railways: The Lifeline of a Nation.’
Google Arts & Culture, formerly known as Google Art Project, is an online platform through which the public can access images, videos and articles of artworks housed in the initiative’s partner museums or other public spaces.
Now, with the help of this incredible initiative, anyone can access awe-inspiring images of several scenic routes, go for a 360° virtual tour of famous coaches of long-running expresses and short documentaries. There is even a section that shows beautiful photos of iconic stations. Every image has a short description along with the location that is integrated with Google maps.
Southern Railway has also taken the initiative to showcase some of the scenic routes in its division. A senior railway official, involved with the heritage department, said, “Since Mettupalayam-Ooty was declared as a heritage line, we took a lot of initiatives to maintain the structure of the stations and the coaches. We are also maintaining the steam locomotives.”
The senior official added that Southern Railway has been taking such steps to cover more routes across the division. “We also have a museum in Tiruchi and taking measures to upgrade it,” he said.
Southern Railway is also ensuring that the structure of famous heritage buildings of railway stations is properly maintained.
There is also a section called ‘The Engineering’ in the project that shows stories about how famous rail engines work, the construction marvel to build famous track routes and even short videos or photo stories of engineers.
Depicting the nation’s lifeline – Indian Railways – through photos and videos offers viewers the behemoth network’s handling of several million passengers.
Users can download the free Google Arts and Culture app to access the Indian Railways project or visit https://artsandculture.google.com/project/indian-railways