Patiala State Monorail Trainways
Patiala State Monorail Trainways (PSMT) was a unique rail-guided, partially road-borne railway system running in Patiala from 1907 to 1927. PSMT was the second monorail system in India, after the Kundala Valley Railway, near Munnar in Kerala, and the only operational locomotive-hauled railway system built using the Ewing System in the world. The Kundala Valley Railway pre-dated this, also using the Ewing system between 1902 and 1908, although this only used bullocks for haulage. Following the conversion of the Kundala Valley Railway from a monorail to a narrow gauge railway in 1908, PSMT was the only monorail system in India until its closure in 1927. These were the only instances of a monorail train system in India, until the Mumbai Monorail was opened on 2 February 2014. A locomotive and a coach of PSMT have been restored, are in running condition and are exhibited in the Indian National Rail Museum, New Delhi. History of PSMT Maharaja Sir Bhupinder Singh of Patiala got this unique railway system constructed to facilitate movement of people and goods in his state. The chief engineer of this project was Colonel C. W. Bowles. Colonel Bowles has earlier successfully used monorail based on Ewing System (designed by William Thorold) during his stint as engineer during laying of tracks for Bengal Nagpur Railway for transportation of construction materials. Maharaja Sir Bhupinder Singh made him chief Engineer for the PSMT project. One of the objects of PSMT was to make use of the 560 mules being maintained by Patiala State. Apart from mules, bullocks were also used to haul the monorail before introduction of steam locomotives on the route of PSMT. A 1908 edition of Imperial Gazetteer of India described the PSMT as "a mono-rail tramway, opened in February, 1907, [which] connects Basi with the railway at Sirhind". An ordnance map of 1913 also shows a tramway running along the west side of the road, but does not mention the PSMT by name. Apart from the above, PSMT has not been mentioned in any official documents of that period in India. Advantage of using Ewing System The railways based on the Ewing System are basically monorails using a balancing wheel for balancing the train. The main load (almost 95%) is borne by the single rail while the rest is borne by the balancing wheel which runs on the ground. Further, in normal train systems, the rails have to be at almost exact level of other rail, failing which the train may go off the tracks. By using Ewing system, this problem is solved as the balancing wheel does not need exact level to maintain the balance of monorail. In addition the cost of laying tracks also goes down considerably since only one rail is used. Another benefit of using Ewing System was that the balancing wheel could run on existing tarred roads as well as the macadam roads thus further reducing cost to lay down tracks. Using one rail also means that the turning circle is far less