Billed as the country’s first jungle safari train, the Vidarbha Queen has ten luxury carriages and will make the 120 km run from Nagpur to Nagbhid, right to the doorstep of the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR) in Chandrapur district. It has six AC and one non-AC saloons, a pantry car, and two guards cabins, all with five-star interiors.

Should everything fall into place, the first run will be in May.

“As far as I know, this will be the first-ever luxury train for a jungle safari in the country,” Divisional Railway Manager, South East Central Railway (SECR), P K Shrivastava said.

In fact, the train was done up about three years ago for a trip to Kanha, but the project had failed to take off. Since then, it had been lying idle. TATR is emerging as a favourite tiger-sighting destination in central India.

“I realised that the kind of clientele it was supposed to serve needed to be given much more than the train then offered. The earlier version had coolers fitted aboard. International tourists, whom we are targeting, would need air—conditioners and similar amenities. So, we spoke to the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC), who showed keen interest in getting funds for the project. Together, we checked up the potential for a profitable run of the train. Many tour operators told us that there is a great potential for the train to be a success. Accordingly, the state government sanctioned Rs 94 lakh, with Tourism Minister Vijay Sinh Mohite-Patil taking personal interest. We then upgraded the facilities by fitting in ACs and installing such other modern facilities and fittings like intercom, five-star bathroom fittings and microwave oven,” he said.

Shrivastava says that journey on narrow-gauge isn’t very comfortable, “hence it is necessary to stud the train with all possible luxury items so it becomes a real pleasure ride.”

Incidentally, SECR has the largest narrow gauge network in the world, about 700 km.

The idea is to take the train up to Nagbhid (a three-hour journey) in the morning, from where the MTDC will take the tourists to Tadoba by road aboard their coach. The train will halt at Nagbhid for the tourists to come back the next evening and will return to Nagpur in the night.

Another itinerary being considered is that, for two days of the week, the train will move to Seoni, 150 km from here, from where it will run up to Nainpur (a three-hour journey). From Nainpur, tourists would be taken to Kanha National Park in the next 30-odd minutes. “Four days it will run to Tadoba and two to Kanha. That’s another option before us. For the Kanha segment, the MTDC and Madhya Pradesh TDC are planning a collaboration,” Shrivastava said.

“I am sending my team to Nagpur by mid-May to finalise things so that we have the first run soon,” MTDC chief Bhushan Gagrani said. “Actually, though it’s a jungle safari train, the kind of tourists we are looking forward to don’t prefer this time to venture out. So, we might see the real rush in winter when international tourists come in,” he added.

Meanwhile, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) and MTDC have finalised the profit-sharing formula in 55-45 ratio, in that order, to get over the last bottleneck in the way of the train’s maiden run.