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Santanu Sanyal

East Indian Railway's first train, which ran from Howrah to Hooghly on August 15, 1854, covering a distance of 24 miles in 91 minutes.

NO REVOLUTIONS in technology have as visibly marked the human condition as those in transport. Moving goods and people, they have opened up continents, transformed living standards, introduced new cultures and spread fashions and folks around the world. It was the railways (and also steamships) that first allowed speedy and widespread dissemination of news and ideas over long distances. Particularly the railways has been the huge opener of communications in the 19th century.

The world's first train ran between Darlington and Stockton in England in 1925 and in less than 30 years of that great event the train services were introduced in India.

India's first train was run by Great Indian Peninsula Railway from Bombay to Thane on April 16, 1853, and it took another 16 months or so for the first train to move in eastern India. East Indian Railway's first train ran from Howrah to Hooghly on August 15,1854, covering a distance of 24 miles in 91 minutes.

EIR's first train consisted of three first-class and two second-class carriages, three trucks for third-class passengers and a brake-van for the guard — enough to accommodate 300 passengers. About 3000 tried for tickets on the inaugural run but most were disappointed. Mr J. Hodgson, the locomotive superintendent of EIR, got the carriages built locally with the help of two local firms — Steward & Company and Seton & Company. The locomotive reached Calcutta via Australia.

The Howrah station consisted of a temporary tin shed with a small booking office and a single line flanked by narrow platforms. The fare ranged from Rs 3 (first class) to seven annas (third class). The main booking office was at Armenian Ghat on the eastern side of the Hooghly river, while the station was located on the other side of the river. To reach the station from Calcutta one, therefore, had to take a ferry across the river and walk for five minutes on the muddy bank. The train fare also covered the journey by ferry — an integrated transport system even at that time. Initially, there were no services on Sundays, only to be changed at the suggestion of a correspondent.

All this and various other interesting information are contained in a sleek publication, Symphony of Progress, The Saga of Eastern Railway, brought out by Eastern Railway (ER) on the occasion of its 150th anniversary. Kudos to the authors, Mr Saumitra Majumder and Mr Pradeep Kumar, both senior officers of the ER, for producing such an excellent book.

East Indian Railway Company was formed in May 1845. Rawland McDonald Stephenson, the first agent and managing director of EIR, was the pioneer in ushering railways to eastern India. But even before that, Prince Dwarakanath Tagore, the grandfather of Rabindranath Tagore, on visiting England and Scotland in 1842, thought of laying a railway line along the river from Calcutta to Rajmahal in the northward direction. Prince Dwarakanath owned Carr Tagore & Company which had collieries in Ranigunge coalfields and also managed a steamer company, General Navigation Company, running services from Calcutta to Rajmahal. The plan was to connect the coalfields in the Rajmahal area. He did float Great Western Bengal Railway in partnership with a few merchants and rivalled EIR but did not succeed in his effort for a variety of reasons. Subsequently GWBR was merged with EIR.

EIR faced several problems prior to launching the service. There were delays in obtaining the permission from the French for traversing their territory in Chandannagore. The locomotive shipped from England was by mistake sent to Australia and could not be brought back before 1854. The ship (HMS Goodwin) carrying the coaches sank at the Sandheads, the mouth of the Hooghly river. The coaches, therefore, had to be built locally.

The book has a number of rare photographs of those days. It also portrays faithfully the evolution of the locomotives, the coaches and the wagons. For example, there is a picture of the Fairy Queen, the oldest surviving steam locomotive in the world as certified by the Guinness Book of World Records. It was manufactured by Kitson, Hewitson & Thomson of Leeds, UK, in 1855. It was sent to Rail Museum in New Delhi, only to be revived lately to haul a tourist train between New Delhi and Alwar.

The milestones are many and include, among others, the establishment of first loco works at Jamalpur in 1862. The same year for the first time two-tier seating arrangement was introduced in third-class. In 1864, the first train ran between Howrah and Delhi. However, till the Yamuna Bridge was constructed in Allahabad in 1865, the coaches were ferried by boat at Allahabad.

The EIR branch line was extended from Allahabad to Jabalpur, and Bombay and Calcutta were connected by train in March 1870. In October that year, EIR established connection with Multan (now Pakistan) via Ghaziabad, Saharanpur and Amritsar. Also the Mughalsarai-Lahore line was completed. Fourth-class accommodation — coaches with no seats but a few benches — was introduced only to be withdrawn on public protest. In 1879 state took control of EIR but the construction and operation of the railway was handed back to the company.

The first railway foundry was set up at Jamalpur Workshop in 1893 and it produced the first steam locomotive in 1899. The country's longest railway bridge (10,052 ft) was constructed by EIR in 1900. In 1906, Lord Minto inaugurated the Grand Chord via Gaya on EIR's Calcutta-Delhi trunk route.

In 1924, the railway finances were separated from general finances based on Ackworth Committee report and, the next year, the first Rail Budget was presented. In 1947, the Assam Railway was cut off from the rest of the country following the Independence and the Partition. In 1951, the zonal grouping of the Indian Railway began and, ER, along with other zonal railways, was born. In 1955, ER was split to from a new zone, South Eastern Railway. In 1956, the first fully air-conditioned train was launched on the Howrah-Delhi section. The list, also including the developments till date, is fairly long.

In the first 55 years of operation of the Indian Railways, there were no toilets in trains. On July 2, 1909, an aggrieved Babu Okhil Chandra Sen lodged a complaint to the then Transportation Superintendent, Sahibganj. After this, the railway authorities had no other option but to introduce toilets in all lower class carriages in trains running more than 50 miles.

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