Is it true that all MG rolling stock in Assam was oriented “the wrong way around” from the stock in the rest of India?
Yes, this is true. All trains had to reverse direction at Siliguri. The Assam Bengal Railway was originally isolated and not connected to the other railway networks. The difference in orientation became a problem on completion of the Assam Rail Link, and the solution adopted was to reverse trains at Siliguri. In case you were wondering why the orientation matters, Indian MG stock is asymmetric in that the male and female couplers are at different ends of each coach or wagon, so that the orientation of the stock has to be precisely maintained. In general, MG routes in India are (or were) designed so that between any two stations, all the routes always resulted in trains arriving with the same orientation — this meant triangular configurations of track, double bypasses on the same side of a line, split junctions necessitating reversal to change routes, etc., were rare and had special operating procedures associated with them. (Locos always had both kinds of couplers at both ends, so tha
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