A revolving restaurant on railway tracks

NAGPUR: Soon you can have your favourite cuisine sitting in tastefully done up coaches, not at the railway station but at South East Central Railway���s (SECR) narrow gauge railway museum at Motibagh on Kamptee Road. Moreover, the coaches that are being renovated are from a nostalgic era, one from 1908 and the other from 1964. Both were built at the Motibagh workshop.
Revolving restaurants are rare in India but the one which will come up at the turntable in the city would perhaps be the first of its kind in India, officials told TOI.
The turntable was a device used at some railroad facilities to change the direction of locomotives around or onto one of several radially arranged rail tracks (a rotary transfer table). After modernisation, the system has been phased out from the Indian Railways completely.
���The unique project is part of the upgradation of narrow gauge (NG) museum which includes two furnished NG vestibule coaches stationed on the turntable. Food will be served from a cafeteria planned near the site,��� revealed K V Rao, additional divisional railway manager (ADRM) SECR, Nagpur.
Rao added that the upgradation project costing around Rs 50 lakh will include beautification works including improving the illumination in the museum campus, circulating pathways, DJs, parking facilities, lawns with nylon grass, a tiny model train to be operated on electricity inside the museum, water fountains, seating arrangements etc.
When asked about the type of food to be served, the ADRM said, ���We have not worked out the menu in detail, but it will mostly include snacks, tea, coffee, cold drinks. Tenders for the project have already been floated and the restaurant is expected to come up in 6 months.���
Pradeep Kamle, senior divisional mechanical engineer (Sr DME) who is incharge of the project, said, ���The two coaches will rotate with the help of a motor on four wheels at the 70-metre circumference with one revolution in half hour,���
A restaurant on wheels (Shaan-e Bhopal) on broad gauge coaches exists in Bhopal. However, it is static and not a revolving one like that is coming up at Motibagh.
Rao said the basic purpose of the restaurant is to sensitise people, specially kids, about the Indian Railways down the years.