Nobody could have put it better than Nagpuria folk singer Madhu Mansoor "Hansmukh" when he sang "Bina engine, bina teil/ Gadi Lohardaga mail. Jharkhand kar kora/ Nadi-nala taka tukku ban re patera" (Without an engine or oil/ This is Lohardaga mail. Pulls through the rivers, falls and bends/ on the plateau of Jharkhand).

Needless to say, Hansmukh penned the verse on the six-bogey Lohardaga mail that runs on a steam engine. This was probably the last moment of glory for the train before it became history in January this year Subsequently, the track on which the ill-fated train ran for almost a century was uprooted to make way for a broadgauge line, which can carry a modern train. Railway minister Laloo Prasad Yadav recently declared that he will inspect the track on April 30 to flag off the new train.

For outsiders and city dwellers unaware of the life in the ubiquitous settlements that fell on the route of Lohardaga mail, this is but a small piece of news. For the residents of these small villages - dotted with thatched houses, vegetable fields, falls and hillocks - they are only going to miss what has been their lifeline for generations.

Megnath and Biju Toppo's in-the-making documentary film Gadi Lohardaga Mail vividly portrays the emotional loss that the settlers between Ranchi and Lohardaga are undergoing. However, Meghnath, a social activist, showed a "rough cut" of the film at Pithouria on the outskirts of Ranchi recently on request of Nagpuri Sansthanm, set up by former Ranchi University professor and activist B. P. Kesri.

When introduced in 1907, the nameless train was primarily used to to carry bauxite ore from Lohardaga to Muri. The train began to roll between Ranchi and Lohardaga only after the conversion of the Muri-Ranchi section into broadgauge. Over the years, this became a "people's train" with the local residents carrying vegetable baskets to sell them at Ranchi and Lohardaga bazaars. In fact, it was the the local people who christened the train Lohardaga Mail though it never ran any faster than 20 miles an hour.

Residents and commuters preferred the slow Lohardaga Mail as all they had to do was wave frantically for the train to stop wherever they wanted it to. They usually sat atop the packed train and, enraptured by its slow speed, waited for the thrill of tunnels and branches of trees whizzing over their heads. They tied their vegetable baskets and milk containers with the iron rods of the train's windows. The train also served a community place for the set of people who boarded it everyday and shared their happiness and grief and rice and hadia on the 80-mile journey covered in seven hours.

Meghnath, Biju Toppo, Dr Ramdayal Munda, folk singers Hansmukh and Mukund Nayak decided to go on picnic in the train after the railways ministry announced its closure last year. Gadi Lohardaga Mail was shot during that picnic. Hansmukh sings "bina engine. bina teil........" in the train. The song, however, deals more with the social and cultural life of the tribals than the train itself. The couplet actually describes how the rural boys and girls huddle together and slide through the hills' as the train moves in the tracks. Still, the song strikes a harmony with the train for its name figures in it.

Residents of Pithauria watched the "rough cut" of the film with tears in their eyes as if they had lost a loved one. They also wanted to know if the new train will serve them the way Lohardaga mail did. Ramdayal Munda asked: "Why can't we preserve the Lohardaga Mail as a heritage train like the trams of Calcutta?". A certain Laloo Prasad Yadav Yadav must answer.

Nalin Verma The Author is the Ranchi based special correspondent of the Telegraph