Black Diamond Express

India's Last Real Steam
Narrow Gauge Railway on DVD
(and much more.....)
Click here to download sample clips

There are two 'Black Diamond Expresses' in India. The official one runs on the Eastern Railway between Howrah and Dhanbad; the lesser known runs at Tipong Colliery, in the far north-east of Assam state, along the WW2 Stillwell Road and almost on the border with Burma. I first went here (on my first trip ever with Yuehong) in 2004. You can read my account, which ends "If (I would like to think 'when') we revisit, it would be for a fortnight instead of three days. This is an absolute treasure of a narrow gauge railway..... " Suffice to say 4 years on we satisfied the dream. However, it is very difficult to convey the ambience of the place with still pictures which must be an excellent reason to buy our DVD! These are conventional stills below to give a feel for this treasure of a railway.

The Black Diamond Express features:

Steam hauled trains (both of the ex- Darjeeling B Class steam locomotives as well as diminutive Bagnall 0-4-0ST 'David' in action), also their Indian built vintage (1974) chain driven diesel
A visit to the shed/workshops
Maintenance of the track (with some primitive single blade switches) and rolling stock
Surface activity of the deep coal mines including cable and human power
Open cast mining - man powered of course
Unloading the coal
Cows...
Life in the Tipong community including a 'Puja' for Saraswati (Goddess of Education) and Friday prayers in the local mosque - as the trains run past naturally!

As usual, the real stars are the people who work on and live along the railway.

Thanks are due to Ashok Sharma of Real India Journeys (ahok_sti@rediffmail.com) who arranged our visit. Click here for more information. And especially the management of Coal India (North Eastern Coalfields) for their hospitality and co-operation.

We have prepared 4 rush clips from our initial capture files (reduced size 320 x 240, wmv format) which you can download:

	Tipong Coal Train 1 also available YouTube Version
	Tipong Coal Train 2 also available YouTube Version
	Tipong Coal Train 3 also available YouTube Version
	Tipong Coal Train 4 also available YouTube Version

The material for this DVD was filmed by independent film producers Rob and Yuehong Dickinson during an extended visit to the railway in February 2008. It was recorded in DV-AVI format and the result will be a broadcast quality film (approx 40-45 minutes at least, dependent on what we find when we capture the 20 hours of raw material). Like 'Logging Off', 'Sweet Spot', 'Shibanxi Heaven' and Battlefield Heroes, this is not just another steam video, it is a total record of a way of life that has barely changed since the railway opened.

At this stage we are not committing ourselves to even an approximate release date but it should be in late 2008 or early 2009. If you would like to register an interest, please send an email to . As is normal, with our DVDs there will be an 'early bird' discount offer and we will be in touch with you at the appropriate time.

(IMPORTANT: the addresses with "@" above are NOT LINKS which can be clicked, they are images, you will have to retype them to send an email. Sorry but that has to be done to try to prevent the address being spammed.)