17 Across: Large bird can't take off from down under (3). That would probably leave Bertie Wooster scratching his head, especially after he finds the first letter is 'E' and the last is 'U'. But not me. EMUs have been a part of life for a very long time. That's only to be expected, for the EMU in this case is the Electrical Multiple Unit, which is what have been running on Chennai's suburban train systems (as on many train systems the world over) since as far back as the 1920s. In those days, Tambaram was an important point on the rail and road network for it was the first large settlement after leaving the city of Madras, towards the southern districts.With the EMUs came the need to maintain them. The workshop was inaugurated in 1931, almost at the same time that metre-gauge EMU services from Beach to Tambaram were regularized. In those days, the services were run with 3-car rakes; over the years they've grown to the 9- or 12-car rakes that are in use now. With a capacity of about 200 people to a car and each car running at least 10 trips a day, that's a lot of footfalls. Besides handling routine maintenance and safety checks, this workshop is also expected to keep the rakes completely clean and neat. It may not be a bird, but for the approximately 1000 employees at the EMU workshop, it would certainly be a big task to keep the 25 rakes on the Beach - Tambaram sector moving smoothly!
Chennai's suburban rail network has always been a watered down version of its Mumbai counterpart. The latter carries almost half of the city's population every day; even with Chennai's significantly lower population, less than a third of them use the suburban trains. For a long while, Bombay and Madras were the only 2 cities in the country that could boast of a vibrant suburban train system. Delhi's was largely unused and Calcutta clung on to its trams.Then Calcutta went for its Metro and Delhi bested it with a world-class system of their own. Chennai's trains continued to run; a new line was added, the older ones were upgraded - all incremental changes, nothing that was front-page stuff. The old lines: Central - Tiruttani, Central - Gummidipoondi/Sulurpet, Beach - Tambaram, were among the oldest tracks laid down in the country. While the first two run out to the northern suburbs, the Beach-Tambaram line goes through the city for the most part and connects up its southern reaches. Here's one of those trains coming up to Beach: it has just left the Park station and now has to turn left, to skirt the western edge of the Fort St. George complex, heading towards the Fort station, its last halt before the Beach terminus. The bit of water at the bottom left of the picture is a part of the Cooum river; looking at its shrivelled and polluted state today, it is hard to believe that this was once a natural moat for Fort St. George!
