More vintage objects added to the collection at Tiruchi Rail Museum

A few more vintage items have been added to the Tiruchi Rail Museum which already has on display a rich collection of old artefacts and documents

A few more vintage items have been added to the Tiruchi Rail Museum which already has on display a rich collection of old artefacts and documents.

The additional railway-related antique items exhibited at the Rail Museum include spares of steam locomotive, British make Admel Edge binding machine, table weight used during the erstwhile South Indian Railway period, drawing equipment and a nearly three-tonne weighing cash chest which was used during the South Indian Railway era, and and four numbers of thyraton gas filled vacuum tube manufactured in 1920. 

Apart from these, a cut model of a diesel engine has been kept on display. Railway sources said the spares of a steam locomotive were brought from the Principal Chief Mechanical Engineer’s office in Chennai and exhibited as an antique item at the Rail Museum situated close to the Tiruchi Junction. 

Similarly, the Admel Edge binding machine, table weight used during the South Indian Railway era and drawing equipment were collected from the Principal Chief Mechanical Engineer’s Office for display at the museum.  The vintage cash chest was collected from the railway cash office in Tiruchi, while the thyraton gas filled vacuum tubes were brought from the Signal and Telecommunication Workshop at Podanur in Coimbatore, the sources added. 

Set up on an area measuring five acres, the Tiruchi Rail Museum, which became functional in February 2015, showcases a slew of vintage objects used by the railways during the colonial era.  The long list of old items displayed inside the museum include station handbell made of brass with wooden handle, South Indian Railway office stamp / seal, calling bell drum, South Indian railway clock and paper weight stones, bell cock, metallic water tank, old railway ticket printing machine, time machine, punch rope hooks, bricks with SIR markings, wagon sealing nails and ticket chest.

The items exhibited outside the rail museum include a vintage fire engine, narrow gauge diesel loco, old inspection trolley, an X class steam locomotive, a metre gauge bogie and a wagon, different varieties of wheel sets and different sleepers.  Over nine lakh pages of various types of old documents and records carefully preserved at the rail museum have been digitised.

These include South Indian Railway gazettes, codes, rules and manuals, correspondence and important old files. The digitisation of the heritage documents was carried out by C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing), a premier research and development organisation of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.