Title - City station shunting heritage gallery

The Rail Heritage Gallery, opened to offer a peak into the history of the Indian Railways at the Bangalore City Railway Station two years ago, will shrink to half its size.

Officials of the Bangalore Division of the South Western Railway are busy converting a major portion of this gallery into unreserved ticket-issuing counters. The gallery was opened in 2011 at the passenger concourse after shifting the unreserved ticket issuing counters to a building in front of the station.When The Hindu visited the gallery, workers were busy looking for space to place the miniature models of trains and photographs. At the other end of the gallery, work on setting up ticket counters was under way. The gallery also has rare photographs of stations, including a few provided by The Hindu and a Warli mural capturing a typical scene at a railway station.

Space constraint

Bangalore Divisional Railway Manager Anil Kumar Agarwal said the gallery was not being closed down. The exhibits were occupying a large amount of space and are now being rearranged, he said. There were hardly any visitors to this gallery, he added.

Mr. Agarwal said the concourse is meant for passengers and opening of about five UTS counters to specific destinations would help them. Existing counters at the reservation building witness large queues because of severe space constraint, he said.

Wrong place?

Officials felt the gallery’s location — in a prime space of the station — was a wrong one. The gallery could have been set up elsewhere on the station premises leaving the concourse exclusively for passenger amenities, they said.

The officials also said UTS counters are always situated within the station premises across the country. The present location of counters outside the station hampered movement of passengers, who usually would be in a hurry to catch the train after buying the tickets.