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Old is gold. This adage comes true when we cherish the age old possessions and hold them valuable. Same is the case with Fairy Queen Express, a broad gauge heritage train famous for its continuous running past in India. Wheezing its way and coal dust out, the Fairy Queen Express is the world's oldest working steam engine driven train. Utilizing the 1855 make locomotive built by Kitson Thompson and Hewitson in Leeds, this train represents the treasured legacy of trains in India.
Over its illustrious journey, the train has received the Guinness Certificate for its achievement and a National Tourism Award in 1999 for the most unique and innovative tourism project. The good thing about this heritage train is that travellers can still board the heritage locomotive aboard the journey from Delhi to Alwar under a two day itinerary. It takes few stopovers enroute to refill the water within the locomotive. In six hours, passengers reach Alwar in Rajasthan, which is prominent in tourism circuit for Sariska National Park. Here, the passengers stay at the Tiger Den hotel. Spread over 881-square-kilometre, this national park features forested woodlands that are home to not only tigers, but other wildlife species like wild boar, chital, sambar, nilgai, jackals, mongooses, peacocks, porcupines, and numerous birds. The park here also is known for a number of evocative ruins like the old Kankwari Fort and a Hanuman temple inside the park that gets lively on Saturdays and Tuesdays, when visitors are allowed to enter this wildlife park for free to worship the god.
Fairy Queen Express Train tourApart from that, there’s a cultural program and theme dinner at the hotel as a part of the Fairy Queen Express Tour. In the early morning, there is a special jeep safari through Sariska National Park. On the return tour, the train leaves Alwar in the noon and reaches Delhi at 18:45 hrs.
The train operates during the travel season time, i.e. from October to March every year. Usually, this heritage train heads off to the start twice a month, on the second and fourth Saturdays.
A shining tribute to the trains of India, this train expresses that the old doesn’t get outdated with the times, but gets better day by day.