The Shakuntala Railway still exists on paper, in satellite imagery, and in the memory of the farmers whose cotton fields it once crossed. Operated for over a century by a British private company, the Killick Nixon group, it ran 190 kilometres through Vidarbha, connecting Yavatmal to Murtijapur, and it was the last privately operated steam railway in India when it finally stopped running regular services. The tracks have not been lifted. The stations have not been demolished. The line simply stopped, and the land around it kept living.That gap between closure and erasure is where these journeys happen.
