TELCO’s Vintage Steam Loco installed at Salem DRM’s office

TELCO’s Vintage Steam Loco installed at Salem DRM’s office

The steam locomotive was manufactured by Telco in 1957 gives added attraction to the office of the Divisional Railway Manager, Salem Division

SALEM: The installation of a vintage steam locomotive along with a second class metre gauge second class passenger compartment has provided added attraction to the Salem Railway Divisional office in the city.

The locomotive and the passenger coach has been installed on the office premises of the Salem Railway Division.

The steam locomotive was manufactured by the TATA Engineering and Locomotive Company Limited (Telco) in 1957.

The locomotive was used to haul the passenger and goods trains in different routes in the past.

Even though this locomotive was withdrawn from service in 2003-04, it had its last journey, when it hauled a passenger train on a heritage run on the Tiruvarur – Tiruthuraipoondi route, just before the closing of the section for undertaking broad gauge conversion works in 2010.

Both the steam locomotive and the passenger coach were fetched by the Salem Railway Division from the Golden Rock Railway Workshop (GOC), thanks to Hari Shankar Verma, Divisional Railway Manager, Salem. The division spent about Rs. six lakh for transporting them to Salem from the GOC, according to official sources of the Salem Railway Division.

The sources said that the division has planned beautification of the major railway stations such as Coimbatore, Udhagamandalam, Coonoor stations by installing vintage locomotives on their premises shortly.

It may be recalled that Salem Railway Division has already installed a vintage MG diesel locomotive in front of the now closed entrance of the old Divisional Railway Manager Office building in the city in December last year.

About TELCO (Tata Engineering and Locomotive Company Ltd.)

The name of the Tata Engineering and Locomotive Company (TELCO) is now changed to Tata Motors. TELCO is an Indian multinational automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Mumbai, India, and a member of the Tata Group. Its products include passenger cars, trucks, vans, coaches, buses, sports cars, construction equipment and military vehicles.

Founded in 1945 as a manufacturer of locomotives, the company manufactured its first commercial vehicle in 1954 in a collaboration with Daimler-Benz AG, which ended in 1969. Later, Tata Motors entered the passenger vehicle market in 1991 with the launch of the Tata Sierra, becoming the first Indian manufacturer to achieve the capability of developing a competitive indigenous automobile. In 1998, Tata launched the first fully indigenous Indian passenger car, the Indica, and in 2008 launched the Tata Nano, the world’s cheapest car. Tata Motors acquired the South Korean truck manufacturer Daewoo Commercial Vehicles Company in 2004 and purchased Jaguar Land Rover from Ford in 2008.

Today Tata Motors has auto manufacturing and assembly plants in Jamshedpur, Pantnagar, Lucknow, Sanand, Dharwad, and Pune in India, as well as in Argentina, South Africa, Great Britain and Thailand. It has research and development centres in Pune, Jamshedpur, Lucknow, and Dharwad, India and in South Korea, Great Britain and Spain.

Tata Motors is listed on the (BSE) Bombay Stock Exchange, where it is a constituent of the BSE SENSEX index, the National Stock Exchange of India, and the New York Stock Exchange. The company is ranked 226th on the Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s biggest corporations as of 2016.

On 17 January 2017, Natarajan Chandrasekaran was appointed chairman of the company.

Source:RailNews