Reader feedback

I wait for reader feedback with trepidation. Although most has been very nice and positive I had a surprise last week when a friend called me to take issue with something I had said. I had expected historical disagreement, the pointing out of terrible errors and abuse, but not the point he made. On page 90 I had said, after looking for the lost railway which transported tea from Munnar:

"Processed tea went up to Top Station on a monorail system, built in 1902 and replaced by a 24 inch gauge railway in 1908. We might have arrived on the west coast, but by the time that the crop had developed into a significant export, most of it went via Madras, on the east.
The tea went up to Mattapetty and on to Top Station before taking the rope-way back to Kottakudi and to Bottom Station, in Tamil Nadu. From there it was transported to various places in India for shipment and processing. It is almost impossible to trace the railway now as it followed the course of the road, but there are remnants of the ropeway system, most recorded by Jimmy Jose on  the informative website at
http://www.irfca.org/gallery/Heritage/Kundala .

Even I nearly turned into a railway buff trying to pick out the last vestiges of this long-lost line in a changed landscape, the difficulties and rough terrain lending the endeavour a glamour I didn’t feel when contemplating the Settle to Carlisle line, for instance."

I would like to record my heartfelt apologies to one of the most interesting, spectacular and historic railways in the UK.

There is still a sneaking feeling that the vertiginous cliffs and viaducts of the railways in the Western Ghats are more romantic and engaging than the lonely line across the moors, but as I now have to admit that I have never been on the Settle to Carlisle Railway, perhaps I am in error.

This web page shows pictures of the lost Kundala Valley Railway.
http://www.irfca.org/gallery/Heritage/Kundala/

The Nilgiri Hill Railway to Ooty shows what the line might have been like today.