OUR BLOG NOW UP AND RUNNING:       http://chasingtrainchallenge.blogspot.com/

Thanks for taking the time to visit our JustGiving page. The Railway Children charity works in India, the UK, East Africa, Russia and Latin America, and has been reaching out to street children around the world for more than a decade.

Their primary aim as an organisation is to change the lives of children living on the streets. They make a real difference to vulnerable children every day.

We are a bunch of like minded, and quite probably mad, individuals who are travelling all the way to West Bengal so we can chase a train 90km up a mountain!! Going to take us 2 days to get there!! Theresa is probably the most sane as she is travelling on the mountain railway, the hare so to speak. Nick, Philippa, Richard, Patricia and Frances are going to run in relay, and Paul and Martin are going to cycle all the way. Nick must be the maddest as after his lead leg he is going to carry on running and complete the whole distance over two days.

Your support means a lot to us and will help Railway Children to keep on their great work.

IN A DAY -

The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR) connects the plains of at New Jalpaiguri with the hill station of . On the way, it passes the most breathtaking scenery and climbs to a height of 7400 feet at Ghum (the highest station in and the second highest in the world), from where glimpses of the magnificent are visible on clear days. It runs for a total of 88km through the foothills of the and climbs a total of 2,100m. But never mind engineering feats and how long it took to build, feats of endurance and how long it takes to get there is the matter - the chase is on!!! So we plan to chase the railway by foot and on cycles  – to see if they can beat the 7hrs and 15 mins that the trusty steam locomotive takes to haul its narrow gauge carriages up the mountain.

THE CHALLENGE

So the challenge is quite simple really – chase the train up the mountain! And see which really is the quickest way to the top. The plan is to arrange a handicap so the first runner will leave at about 07:00 from New Jalpaiguri on the first leg of the run. The run will be done in a series of legs. Meanwhile the train will depart on its scheduled journey to at . About the cyclists will set off in chase of the train and the runners, they will do the whole route as one leg. So we now have the runners chased by the train, chased by the cyclists.

If we get the handicap right we should see a grandstand finish at station at around with the runners, cyclists and train racing into the station.

Theresa will travel on the train for good measure.

And just getting there is a challenge! Overnight plane to Calcutta and then overnight train to New Jalgaipuri, arriving over 30 hours after we leave..... 

Further information

There is some excellent information on the Darjeling Himalayan Railway and the Railway Children Charity, including videos, on the web. The Trainz computer simulation on youtube of part of the route is particularly interesting.

Suggested sites

http://www.dhrs.org/

mms://stream.unesco.org/culture/nhk/DARJEELING_HIMALAYAN_RAILWA.wmv

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darjeeling_Himalayan_Railway