Model Railroading in India

Kensington Maryland ( 10 minutes driving distance North of Washington D.C., U.S.A.)

Dear Walia,

Please accept my hearty congratulations on your train layout. To achieve something like this in India , where I know that virtually no kind of support for the hobby of Model Railroading has been available, is truly a great achievement.

What gauge is it ( HO?). where did you get the track and the locomotive? what about the rest of the train ( goods wagons or passenger bogies? Are you planning to build those yourself? )

I am also very happy to learn that you live in Bangalore since I am not only from Bangalore ( Malleswaram ) but keep going there almost every year with my family. We did not go this year ( 2011 ) but hope to go sometime during July/August 2012.

I was introduced to the hobby of model Railroading in December 1953 when, as a boy of 7 years of age living in Washington D.C., my mother presented me with my first Lionel Train set. Over the next 5 years I collected three more train sets and some accessories and had them set up on a train table in the basement of our house.

However, we returned to India for good in 1958 and until I returned finally to the US in 1993 ( after a gap of 35 years ) at age 47 ( I am now 65 ) as an immigrant with my wife and two sons I was living in a virtual desert as far as anything connected with Model Railroading was concerned in India.

I could never pursue my hobby properly in India when I lived there and although I set up my trains and ran them once in a while I never was able to place them on a permanent layout as we always lived in houses where we did not have enough space.

Finally sometime during the late 1980s one of our servants stole the most important parts of my trains, a beautiful steam locomotive ( 4-6-4 ) which not only had the whistle but also had puffing smoke, etc., and little by little all the rest of the stuff began to be unuseable, so after we moved here my brother in law ( who is my Power of Attorney holder in Bangalore and who moved into my house while his own house in Malleswaram was being developed into apartments ) threw away the remaining pieces ( with my permission, since I knew that I could always start afresh since I am now permanently settled here in the US.)

However, It was my long standing ambition for several years while I developed my career in India to one day be the first person to start manufacturing Model Railroad products ( Locomotives, other rolling stock, accessories, etc ) in Bangalore completely to Indian Outline resembling Indian trains, traffic ( including Autorickshaws, bullock carts,Indian village scenery which you see when travelling by train, etc ) all of which had to be of quality equal to or better than anything manufactured by any of the best manufacturers in the Western World ( although most such manufacturing is now being done in China to Western designs ).

Please let me know whether you have any knowledge as to whether anyone else in India has begun any kind of quality manufacture of any kind of working model railways of good quality.

Also, please let me know more about yourself and family, your address in Bangalore and phone number, etc.

As for myself, after returning to India in 1958 I completed High School from La Martiniere Calcutta in 1963 and went on to earn a Bachelor’s Degree ( B.Tech.) in Metallurgical Engineering from the I.I.T. Kharagpur in 1969. I had a white collar career in Engineering and Management till the end of 1981 including my last job which was at Baghdad in Iraq.

After returning from Iraq in early 1982 I never became employed in India but chose to start my own small business which was a roadside cart ( pulled into place by an autorickshaw ) selling food in Malleswaram at a corner near the M.E.S. College, since I had been an enthusiastic consumer of roadside foods all over India for several years and while eating at such stand up places I used to calculate how much money such vendors made and I found out over a lot of study of such small businesses that they were making very much more than I was despite my having a Degree in engineering from I.I.T., etc so I had made up my mind that such a career would be on my agenda if I ever had a problem getting a job in Bangalore. Although we started with some burgers and kati rolls and a few Chinese dishes within a few months the sales of the Chinese dishes overtook everything else and by popular demand of our customers we cancelled everything else and became a purely Chinese Food cart and I gradually developed into the main chef since staff always kept joining and leaving !!!

Of course those were the conditions of the years prior to the development of the IT industry and the boom of the last 15 years or so in which white collar salaries have gone up substantially, but all of that happened after I had left India for good in 1993.

I have had my share of ups and downs here but have been reasonably stable for the past few years and now am slowly getting into the position where I can again start rebuilding my interest and activities in Model Railroading, so I am interested in staying in touch with anyone, especially in India, who may be interested in developing the hobby and supply resources in India and in modelling Indian outline trains.

I have written quite a lot and hope I have not taxed your patience too much.

Please stay in touch.

Thanking you,

Vijay Tonse

In India In Bangalore

Karan & Kiran Model Trains.wmv
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVfQJirjp5U

http://www.svit-arc.in

Skybus Project SVIT-ARC.mp4
ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA3YRdbq4FU&feature=g-upl&context=G2eccdc3AUAAAAAAABAA