The Hindu Business Line : Heritage tracks

Hurrying feet and harried indifference… amidst all that tumult of travel, it’s easy to forget that our railway stations are veritable living pieces of history.

“Many say Chennai had a railway track before 1853 somewhere near Chintadripet. If that’s true then we got the first rail track in India,” says Dr Suresh, a member of the Indian Railways Fan Club. A group of us had gathered outside Ch ennai’s Egmore station early on a Sunday morning recently to go on a ‘Heritage railway walk’ organised by the Mylapore Times and IRFCA. Like our modern education system and the judiciary, India owes its rail history to the British. Chennai’s first station was Royapuram, followed by the more familiar Central and, later, Egmore.

Standing at the car park, we gazed up at the grand façade of Egmore station; a familiar sight on our daily travels in the city, many of us were now looking at it with new eyes. “What is remarkable about these structures is that they don’t scream out their importance. The buildings are magnificent but otherwise their history isn’t obvious. There is little to go ‘ooh ha’ over,” says Vincent D’ Souza, editor of Mylapore Times.

“Egmore is very recent compared to the others. Built around 1908, it witnessed major renovation in 1930 and yet again in the 1980s. This was to supplement the Central Station built in 1870,” says Suresh. Its architecture is neo-classical and the entrance as we see it today is actually an extension built in the 1930s. Time and increasing traffic have prompted quite a few additions, which fortunately are integrated harmoniously with the original style.

Inaugurated around 1906, Egmore served as the terminus for South Indian Railways, whose headquarters were in Tiruchi (then Trichinopoly). It’s difficult to imagine that Egmore wasn’t always a station. Says D’Souza, “History says it was actually a fort, called the Egmore Redo; a lot like the Leeds Castle which is a part of Santhome. There is little evidence but it’s possible that the station came up in a place that once used to store ammunition for the British.”

“It got its first electrified line in 1931. The electric rolling coaches built by the English Electric Company were brought down here. Till 2004 the service was running in the meter gauge. It was the only meter-gauge suburban train in the world. The platform still exists. We were there during the last three days of the service. People cried when it was stopped,” recalls Venkat, a member of IRFCA.

Walking along the neat map of lines and broad platforms, it’s easy to see that the station has undergone so many changes that very little of its ancientness catches the modern traveller’s eye. Several boxy little offices have been added to the high-ceilinged station which would look like Santa’s work sheds if only the people, gravely examining very official looking stuff, looked a bit more cheerful.

“Modelled on English stations, the suburban section is outside the main building. All trains going south of Madras terminated here,” said Venkat, as we walked across the footbridge connecting the two sections.

It’s easy to miss out that this ubiquitous footbridge (FOB in rail terminology) is about 100 years old. It has a companion in the dust-covered clock at the end of it. “The rail authorities actually got someone in Chennai to repair the original mechanism. It is more accurate than ever,” grins Venkat.

Stations aren’t just about trains, schedules and bookings. As the enthusiastic group discovered, Egmore can teach important lessons in the concept of water harvesting. Would you have known that the many vertical columns along the tracks are hollow marvels that are cleverly engineered to ensure that rainwater flowed through them and then, via an attached pipe, collected in a rainwater tank at the end of the tracks? Here’s rainwater harvesting that’s 100 years old!

Egmore still remains the meeting point of the meter gauge and broad gauge. “An interesting thing is that India is among the few countries that have the broad gauge. Everywhere else there is a standard gauge, which is 4 ft 8.5 inches wide. The British had an idea about our population, so 150 years ago they decided to make it 5.5 ft,” says Venkat.

Central figure

From the youngest of Chennai’s stations, the walkers piled into a van to move to the Central Station. The bright-red building is part of the city’s collective consciousness and exudes a warm presence. Always busy, the Central rarely sleeps. The station and its vicinity is a swelling sea of trains, travellers, cabs, autos and buses.

“It was probably inaugurated around 1873. The dates are a bit controversial,” says Suresh. Conceived as a subsidiary to the main station at Royapuram, the building was designed by George Hardinge, a famous British architect living in Madras. The Central Station with its clock tower is an enduring landmark.

The building has gothic elements and is well maintained. Central Station gained in importance around 1907, after Royapuram declined, and became a meeting point for trains from across the country. As most in the group agreed, its biggest advantage is that there are no steps to climb with luggage.

Early on, all the best trains started from platform one. Time has wrought many changes, of which the most significant is probably the fact that all the premium trains now start from platform nine, 10 and 11 while platform one has trains doing only short runs.

Interestingly, it’s the only station that has a platform numbered 2a. “Actually meant for delivering water and goods to the station staff, the Shatabdi now starts from here,” explains Venkat. On one end of the platform we spy a large weighing scale inscribed with ‘MSM’ or Madras and Southern Maratha Railway. More than 100 years old, the sturdy scales now find little use except for the waiting passengers sitting on it or the children clambering up, confident it won’t give away. On the opposite side stands a computerised scale.

Royapuram in repose

After the bustling Egmore and Central stations, Royapuram seems like a testimony in quietude to our great rail history. A stray dog eyed us lazily as it sunbathed. And the lone staffer at the ticket counter was curious about our presence. In 1856, soon after Bombay line was laid, the British government started thinking of other railways in India and wanted to link the port towns. “The first line linking Royapuram with Wallajah road, some 100 miles away, was inaugurated by Lord Harris, the then Governor of Madras,” says Suresh. Slowly it developed into a major station and eventually declined in importance. “One reason it lost out to Central was the fact that Central was, well, more centrally located.”

Architecturally it was built along the lines of a late-Renaissance villa,” says Suresh. Today the building is in a decrepit condition and is mainly used by the harbour trains bringing in coal for the Mettur dam. There have been attempts to restore the historic building but Royapuram’s days appear well and truly over. But the station doesn’t seem to mind.

Grass may have grown among its wooden sleepers but no whistles or signals disturb its contemplative air just as nothing can detract from its heritage value.

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